Several academics hold that participation has a positive effect on empowerment, hence increase people’s and communities’ ability to influence the decision concerning themselves. At the same time participation and inclusion of the civil society may only be a way of claiming that decisions made by the power-holders are legitimate, resulting in a disempowerment of people that are ‘included’ in the decision-making processes. With the background in South Africa’s constitutional right to access to water, and the current conflict between this right and the need and idea of cost-recovery, how has this influenced the water policy on local level. In the case of the public flats of Westcliff, this community, along with the Crossmoor and Bayview, these communities have made some important advances in the relationship with the municipality with regard to water policy and other socio-economic rights. Through continual struggle and opposition to the municipality’s policy of cost-recovery, the communities have managed to start a more productive interaction with the government. Important questions with regard to this success are how were the communities able to influence, were they able to influence or was the changes results of something else, what is the results of the interaction that has been done, what did they do that made them special, and how has this engagement influenced the municipalities engagement with other communities?

Kristine Wasrud is a masters-student enrolled in the programme of Culture, Environment and Sustainability, at the Institute for Environment and Development, at the University of Oslo.

Agriculture has played a dominant role in the development and shaping of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies and cultures throughout its history. To date, no other continent is more intertwined and associated to peasantry and smallholder production than Africa. Nevertheless, over the past three decades, following the process of the agrarian transition also at work in other regions of the globe, the continent has witnessed an erosion of smallholder farming that has influenced the production and reproduction of rural poverty and the marginalization of rural areas. This presentation asks if traditional farming has experienced a decline in rural KwaZulu-Natal, and which factors may have contributed to this decline. Consequently, is it worthwhile for the state and development practitioners to attempt to re-invigorate agriculture given the magnitude of these influences?

CCS Visiting Scholar Umesha de Silva is currently a Masters student at the University of Ottawa, writing her thesis on the future of traditional farming in South Africa. Umesha has previously worked as a policy officer in the Financial Guarantee Policy Division and currently acts as a consultant for the International Development Research Centre on food security issues in South, South East and East Asia.

Two of the main civil society critics of titanium mining at Xolobeni in the Eastern Cape, Sinegugu Zukulu and John Clarke of Sustaining the Wild Coast, are passing through to explore not only the current state of the struggle against Australian mining capital and the SA state, but a longer-range view. The two will discuss philosophical roots and orientations to environmental justice, seen from the unique mix of grassroots and technical knowledges that have been brought to bear in the campaign to keep resources in the soil.

BACKGROUND:

The issue of the mining rights for the Xolobeni titanium-bearing deposits, on the Wild Coast, will be finalised by the end of this month or early next month, Department of Minerals and Energy (DME) spokesperson Bheki Khumalo tells Mining Weekly.

In the company's latest annual report, ASX-listed Mineral Commodities (MRC) chairperson Joseph Caruso says that the approval of the mining rights application for Xolobeni has been an arduous process. MRC believes that, due to the importance of the Xolobeni project to the area, the Minister will continue to support the issuing of the Xolobeni mining rights; however, the issue date has been deferred, pending the outcome of the appeal, says the company. However, he adds that the company will continue to pursue the project, as its merits are substantial, although the company will minimise expenditure on the project pending the outcome of the appeal.

In August 2008, MRC reported that the DME would award it the mining rights for the Kwanyana block within the Xolobeni mineral sands tenement area, adding that the mining rights would be signed in October.

However, in September, the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC) - comprising affected community members and represented by the Grahamstown Legal Resources Centre (LRC) - filed a notice of appeal with the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica.

The ACC requested the Minister to suspend, and then appeal, the decision to grant the mining rights. The basis of the appeal was that the mining rights were granted to MRC without sufficient and reasonable notice to, consultation with, or invitation for comments from, the Xolobeni community as an interested and affected party.

The DME acknowledged receipt of the appeal, but by March had not complied with the rest of the requirements in terms of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act of 2002 within a reasonable period, LRC Xolobeni case lawyer Sarah Sephton told Mining Weekly in a previous interview.

The final decision on whether or not the mining licence would be granted was still unclear as there were strong arguments both for and against granting the mining rights.

The proposed Xolobeni mineral sands project, near Port Edward, will be a dry mining operation as the area being mined is relatively small. Between 13-million tons and 15-million tons of minerals are expected to be mined a year, should the project go ahead.

Tormin Project In December 2008, MRC was granted mining rights for the Tormin heavy minerals project, on the West Coast of South Africa. Final processing plant design and engineering are now taking place.

The company has commenced procedures to appoint an engi- neering group to update the existing feasibility study. Based on a positive outcome to this phase of the work, the company will let a tender for a turnkey project to produce zircon and rutile concentrate, says Caruso in his statement to shareholders.

On the current schedule, the plant should be operational by the end of calendar 2010, Caruso adds.

Uranium Prospects In April, MRC advised that it had entered into a letter of agreement with Africa Uranium Limited (AUL) - which provides for MRC to have exclusive rights to fund AUL's mineral exploration activities, in return for equity in AUL.

AUL is an unlisted public company with a 70% interest in the Hoasib uranium project in Namibia, and has submitted a prospecting licence application for the Usakos uranium project in Namibia.

AUL also has uranium projects in the Karoo Basin, in South Africa, which were explored between 1970 and 1985, but AUL exploration has been limited because of a lack of funding.

The agreement provides for MRC to spend up to $7-million, to earn a 50% equity interest in AUL. It also provides for MRC to acquire a further 1% stake in the company for $700 000.

MRC's minimum expenditure commitment is $1-million. Should MRC stop funding after this expenditure, it will have earned a 10% stake in AUL.

Other Ventures As far as other operations are concerned, MRC through its subsidiary Kariba Kono, owns a diamond tailings dump in Koidu, Sierra Leone. The company resolved to sell its subsidiary or its assets in Sierra Leone, and had an agreement in place with ROK Diamonds.

MRC says that the diamond pan plant supplied by Promet Engineers Africa for the project failed. The sale to ROK was not concluded, and MRC took the engineering company to court, where the companies settled the matter, and A$2-million was paid to MRC, without admission of liability.

All plant and machinery delivered under the construction contract remain in the possession and ownership of MRC.

MRC also holds a 9,13% stake in oil and gas consultancy Petro Ventures International, which MRC says has secured three project areas in the UK, Hungary, and off the Romanian coast.

The company's other interest lies in listed gold production and exploration company Allied Gold. MRC is said to be one of the biggest shareholders in Allied Gold, holding more than 15-million shares in the company, at a value of some $6,5-million.

Interested parties hoping that MRC will not be granted more mining rights in South Africa point to the fact that mining junior MRC is not actually physically involved in any mining projects, lacks experience, and is likely seeking to merely sell its projects to a larger mining company.Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyuwww.miningweekly.com

Despite citizen’s having access to South Africa’s first democraticpolice force and massive reform within the organization, policing bygroups outside of the state – for example, lynch mobs, vigilantes, andcivic associations – is broadly practiced. This pattern is not limitedto South Africa. Similar forms of extra-state policing are widelypracticed in other transitional democracies in Latin America, the formerSoviet Union, and throughout Africa. This presentation asks: Why hasextra-state policing been so prevalent in South Africa’s townships sincethe end of apartheid? What can the South African case tell us about thehigh rates of extra-state policing in other transitional democracies?What does the prevalence of extra-state policing suggest about thedifficulties of democratic state building?

Nick Smith is currently a PhD student at the University of Chicago,doing his dissertation on the increase in violent crime inpost-Apartheid South Africa. Nick holds a BA from the College of Williamand Mary and MAs from the George Washington University and theUniversity of Chicago. He also spent a year as part of the Ideology andDiscourse Analysis Programme at the University of Essex. Nick previouslyworked as a research assistant at the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme Washington Liaison Office.

CCS Seminar on UKZN worker rights

The Centre for Civil Society and UKZN Workers Forum invites you to a seminar on worker rights:TOPIC: Problems faced by contract workers at UKZNSPEAKERS: Trevor Ngwane (CCS) and representatives of the UKZN Workers Forum

Organised by the Centre for Civil Society and the UKZN Workers ForumCOME AND HEAR HOW WORKERS ARE EXPLOITED AND OPPRESSED AT UKZN:

Cleaners

Security

Gardeners

Catering

Maintenance

Teaching, Administration & Support Staff

STUDENTS, WORKERS & ACADEMICS: ALL WELCOME!!At UKZN there are 2 types of contract workers Outsourced workers who are employed by contract companies.These workers are treated like slaves by their bosses, the contract companies / labour brokers. These workers do useful and important work for the university but are treatedlike outsiders by the administration. Many of them take home about R1 000 a month. No study benefits, no study leave, no medical aid, no housing subsidy, no pension.No respect, no appreciation, no satisfaction. The university refuses to take responsibility for their well-being.Sometimes they work without proper equipment, no mops, no brooms, no soap, no overalls, no walkie-talkies. If they complain they arethreatened with expulsion or transfer to other work sites off campus.Already Magnum Shield has victimized and expelled 9 security workers for attending a workers’ seminar held at Howard College.

Contract workers employed by the universityThese workers are employed by UKZN on perpetual contract.Many are in administration, support services and some are tutors/lecturers.Some are on 3-month contracts. They have no job security and are at the mercyof the head of department or senior manager. If they are “cheeky” their contracts are not renewed. Their contracts are biased and one-sided in favour of the university. They are oppressed. COME TO THE SEMINAR. LET US TALK ABOUT JUSTICE, FAIRNESS AND WORKER RIGHTS AT UKZNFor more details please call the Centre for Civil Society at 031-260 3195AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

Ethics, Resistance and Global Justice

The Centre for Civil Society invites you to a seminar to be held as follows:

PART ONE: Under what conditions and on what grounds is it morally rightto resist, and when it is morally wrong? Or more specifically: (i) Whenis it morally permitted, and (ii) when is it morally obligatory, i.e.wrong not to resist? A common suggestion is that it might be justifiedto resist if there are substantive injustices that can be reduced oreliminated. Unjust acts, practices, procedures, rules, laws, or systems,e.g. oppression, violation of rights, torture, exploitation, orcorruption, can all justify resistance. The basic idea is this: If somepowerful agent violates human rights (in the broad sense), e.g. if itdoes not respect, protect, or fulfil human rights, then resistance maywell be the most appropriate response. Some violations are worse thanothers, however, e.g. actively violating a right may be worse thanfailing to protect it or promote it. So, how should we identify rightsviolations (and violators)? To answer this question, we need to whathuman (and civil) rights we have, what duties these rights imply (andwho are the duty-bearers), on what grounds can rights be justified, andwho is responsible for fulfilling our rights, e.g. how the correspondingduties should be allocated.

PART TWO: The emerging discipline of “resistance studies” has relevancefor our critical support of resistance movements that are dealing withcontemporary globalization, especially the prospects of some of thesemovements to make the world a more just place. “Resistance studies” is arecent research field (Amoore 2005; Couzens 2005; Duncombe 2002; Lilja2007; Scott 1992; Vinthagen 2005; Vinthagen & Lilja 2007, and 2009)which tries to understand the concept of “resistance” (to underminepower) in its various forms. Several different definitions andperspectives of “resistance” exist. A fruitful definition will bepresented, one which allows us to look both into collectively organizedresistance (be that violent or nonviolent such) and into the moreinformal, individualized and hidden forms of “everyday resistance”.Various resistance strategies and theories of social movementmobilization will then be presented, in order to outline in what sensetransnational resistance movement could make real difference to injustworld order structures.

The speakers:Bengt Brülde works as an associate professor and senior lecturer inpractical philosophy (mainly ethics) in the Department of Philosophy atUniversity of Gothenburg (Sweden) and the Department for Nursing, Healthand Culture at University West (Sweden). He also writes books and has aweekly feature on ethical issues on Swedish national radio. Brülde'scurrent research covers four main areas: (a) The ethics of happiness andsuffering, e.g. how the goal to promote happiness and reduce sufferingfits into ethics as a whole, and how a “happiness principle” is bestformulated. (b) Public health ethics, especially how the ultimate goalsof public health activities should be formulated. (c) Global justiceissues. (d) The right to health: its content, its justificatory basis,and what duties it implies (with an emphasis on “duties acrossborders”). More information: http://www.phil.gu.se/bengt/ Bengt can bereached atbengt.brylde@phil.gu.se

Stellan Vinthagen is senior lecturer in Sociology and Peace (and adevelopment worker), with a focus on nonviolent resistance,globalisation and social movements, based at the School of Global Studies’ Department of Peace and Development Research, GöteborgUniversity; and at the Department of Social and Behavioural Studies,University West, Sweden. His PhD (2005) in Peace and DevelopmentResearch explored the sociology of nonviolent action. Stellan is theauthor of two books, a co-author of two books (one more soon published),and editor of two books and has written several journal articles andpapers at conferences. He is a visiting lecturer at severalinstitutions, e.g. College of International Citizenship (CIC),Birmingham. He is co-founder of the Resistance Studies Network, a memberof the peace and development scholar network of Transcend and theNonviolence Commission of the International Peace Research Association,an associate of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and FutureResearch, an advisor to the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict,a Council member of War Resisters’ International. He is also a movementactivist (since 1980) and educator in conflict transformation and civildisobedience (since 1986). Stellan has been in totally in prison a yearfor peace work, e.g. in England (6 months, 1998), because of anonviolent direct disarmament action against the nuclear submarineTrident. In January and June 2007 he was arrested and hold over nightbecause of participation in Academic Seminar Blockades of the nuclearsubmarine base in Faslane, Scotland, together with over 70 otheracademics (see www.faslane365.org).

A book on the conference proceedings is being edited. He currently is organizing a Ship to Gaza together with others. He lives in the Ecological village Lilla Krossekärr, on the island Orust, at the West-coast of Sweden, north of Gothenburg.For relevant publications, see his CV at www.resistancestudies.org (LinkPeople). Stellan can be reached at stellan.vinthagen@resistancestudies.org. Address: School of GlobalStudies, University of Gothenburg, Box 700, SE 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.

Helen McCue is best known as a co-founder of Rural Australians for Refugees (2001).A trained nurse educator she worked with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the Middle East in 1981,was then seconded to the United Nations Relief and Works Organisation (UNRWA) in Lebanon, and subsequently worked as a volunteer in refugee campsin Beirut 1982-83. In 1984 she co-founded the trade union aid body Australian People for Health Education and Development Abroad (APHEDA), and was its first Executive Director and regional adviser in South Africa and the Middle East until early 1994.She founded the Women Refugee EducationNetwork (1996) and the Wingecarribee Commmunity Foundation (2001),and was involved in the establishment of Wingecarribee Reconciliation Group (1997).

Seminar on the DRC

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society:

Seminar: The Business of Civil War - Transnational Governance and Trade in the Debris of the Congolese StateSpeaker: Patience KabambaDate: Tuesday, 15 SeptemberTime: 11am-12:30pmVenue: Memorial Tower Building Room F208, University of KwaZulu-NatalHoward College Campus

The current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows that lack of a government does not necessarily mean lack of governance. The latter could be provided by non-state actors. The study also questions the failed state theory.

Patience Kabamba has degrees from the Sorbonne in Paris (undergraduate), the UKZN School of Development Studies (masters) and the cultural anthropology department of Columbia University (PhD). He is presently Visiting Lecturer at Emory University and was formerly Instructor at Columbia University and an Africanist expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. His forthcoming book is The Business of Civil War (Routledge 2009).

All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region and Genocide Prevention (2002) Cursed by Riches:Who Benefits from Resource Exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?. All Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region and Genocide Prevention : 1-52.More

Mamdani, Mahmood (1998) Understanding the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo September, 1997. Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town : 1-29.More

Over the past year, the South African economy has crashed dramatically, and all indications are that any recovery will lag a world upturn - itself terribly weak due to deep-rooted contradictions in the capital accumulation process. What are the structural and policy reasons for SA's crisis, and what reactions have we seen in civil society? What, specifically, has organised labour done to address the problems, and how do interest rates and exchange controls feature in today's and tomorrow's class conflicts? Are there also environmental factors to consider, and might resolutions to the crisis be found in community-based social struggles? The presenters will discuss arguments to be published in the next issue of Amandla! magazine.

***

Dick Forslund is an associate researcher with the Alternative Information and Development Centre in Cape Town, and a senior lecturer at Stockholm University's School of Business. His recent book, Give Me the Money, examines the financialisation of everyday life in the Western World. He has prepared a briefing paper on political inflation rate reporting and class interests.

Patrick Bond is senior professor of development studies and director of CCS, and the author of several books on SA political economy. He has recently been advising trade unions on economic and social policy, having drafted more than a dozen state policies during the late 1990s.

The privatisation of Durban's bus service six years ago was an unmitigated disaster for commuters, communities and drivers. At a time the taxilords are threatening to strike in order to shut - or take over - a new generation of Bus Rapid Transit facilities in other cities, the resurrection of a public bus service in Durban is vital. What are the conditions faced by workers? What can communities do to pressure the city for a resolution to the crisis?

Dudu Khumalo, a CCS Community Scholar, is a former trade union organiser and public transport commuter.

The government's National Health Insurance (NHI) proposals havebeen criticised as being too expensive for South Africa. Yet for thevast majority of South Africans, private medical aids are out offinancial reach, and indeed scheme members are having severe problemswith medical savings accounts and rising copayments. Are the claims ofeconomists and corporate executives correct? Or will NHI potentiallygenerate savings for those who move from the private sector, and alsoincrease overall social well-being?

UKZN political economist (and CCS Director) Patrick Bond has been doingresearch on healthcare financing since the mid-1990s, while on thefaculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health and inservice to the SA Department of Health. He subsequently carried outcosting exercises on NHI options for the Congress of SA Trade Unions. Hedirects the Centre for Civil Society. This talk is cosponsored by UKZNLifelong Learning.

Barack Obama's presidency and civil society reactions

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Center for Civil Society for a seminar on US politics

The circumstances that brought Barack Obama to the presidency of the US left his political position surprisingly undefined. He is the first Black president, but has never been strongly identified with the Black community. His electoral majority was based as much on opposition to the legacy of George W. Bush and on concern with the state of the economy than on any specific program commitments by Obama. Even his most definite commitment, to withdraw US troops from Iraq, has proved surprisingly flexible. This talk examines Obama’s record to date, in the context of the forces from civil society and the global economy that surround him, to attempt to answer the question “Who is Barack Obama?”

John C. Berg has been a US Senate aide, an activist against the Vietnam War, a political prisoner, and a participant in many progressive political campaigns. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1975, and subsequently taught political science at Suffolk University, where he is now Professor of Government. He is the author of Unequal Struggle: Class, Gender, Race, and Power in the US Congress (1994), and editor of Teamsters and Turtles? Progressive US Political Movements in the 21st Century (2003).

Thinking about the Legacy of Mbeki's Politics

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Center for Civil Society for a seminar on South African politics

What legacy do we have from the past decade for the period ahead? One of the most influential South Africans during Thabo Mbeki's presidency, Dr Essop Pahad, will offer a frank account, and field critical questions from a panel including Patrick Bond, Orlean Naidoo and Trevor Ngwane from the UKZN Centre for Civil Society.

Dr Essop Pahad has been a leading political activist since 1958 when he joined the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. After an exiled period of struggle, during which he edited the World Marxist Review, Pahad served in Parliament and ultimately as Minister in the Presidency under Thabo Mbeki. He is the editor of a new analytical journal, The Thinker. According to the website: '“The Thinker” seeks to open up the space for public discourse, the clash of ideas, to stimulating intellectual debate and scientific analysis. “The Thinker” will be a partisan journal for progressive change but non-partisan with respect to party political positions and activities. It will strive to give all its contributors the freedom to express what they think; understanding that openness in the context of ideas, theoretical divergences and multidimensional practice is a necessary condition for fundamental social transformation. We are committed to open up the space for honesty expressed views mindful that the ideas, analysis and Commentaries that we will publish may be uncomfortable for some and anathema for others. As we embark on this journey we are resolved that “The Thinker” will be as solid as Rodin’s “Le Pensuer” and solid as the Metal in which it was cast.'

Mbeki’s legacy — what legacy?Coenraad Bezuidenhout M&G

A flip through a KwaZulu-Natal newspaper the other day revealed former minister in the presidency Essop Pahad had been defending former president Thabo Mbeki’s legacy in front of a group of Durban students last week.

Rather hard-pressed by, among other, a few combative researchers from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Centre for Civil Society, Pahad had a couple of interesting quotations attributed to him, some of the more brow-raising of which expected us to believe that: the government was in the habit of promising services to the people that it could not deliver; it was the norm for one administration to leave “gaps” for the next to “fill”; socialism was probably the only desirable alternative to remove class distinctions in service delivery; since everybody was going to die regardless of their HIV status, Mbeki’s administration prioritised the fight against pharmaceuticals selling expensive drugs above the efficient roll-out of anti-retrovirals and since it would boil down to him being seen as a tool of the West, Mbeki criticised Mugabe but resisted pushing for regime change in Zimbabwe.

With messages such as these, one may quite rightly ask what type of legacy it is that Pahad set out to salvage? I believe there is much the former minister can do to help the former president recover his lost honour. Therefore, regardless of whether the former minister may or may not agree that a change of tack would be in order, I would like to recommend one anyway, starting with some time out to catch a good movie and to read up a bit on political history.

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon graced our cinemas earlier this year. The movie may make Pahad recall something of his recent nightmare experience at the UKZN, but the truth is we have never had the equal of the Frost/Nixon interviews in South Africa. Knowing that it was indeed one of the former minister’s favoured scapegoats while in office, Pahad may also gesture to that fateful encounter in Die Wilderness between the architect of the “third force”, PW Botha, and his chief apologist, Cliff Saunders, a couple of years ago. But since no public broadcaster would touch PW’s last pearls of wisdom with a barge pole, Pahad would do well to cast his mind’s eye back even further.

If he did, he would learn that South Africa has had its fair share of fallen leaders. Before the Groot Krokodil (“Great Crocodile” as PW was known in Afrikaans) we had BJ Vorster. BJ was not only a contemporary of Nixon. Within the context of apartheid, the information scandal that felled Vorster was at least the equal of Watergate, which ended Nixon’s presidency. Both scandals entailed a range of unlawful activities that included money laundering, apparently with the knowledge of these two former heads of government. For Vorster it would have been about the consolidation of the apartheid regime; for Nixon, a victory in the ’72 election was at stake.

If he embarked on this journey, Pahad would find that Vorster had to vacate his position as prime minister in 1978 in much the same way that Mbeki did in 2008. While it was a parliamentary investigation that made a crisis of confidence in Vorster’s leadership a fait accompli, the fact that Parliament was entirely dominated by the National Party gave it much the same ring as Mbeki’s “recall” by the ANC. Pahad will also note that where the final chapter in Mbeki’s public life has yet to be written, Vorster met a rather dreary end when he had to stand down again after a short stint as ceremonial state president in 1979. The reason: a judicial enquiry — rumoured to be a witch hunt hastily arranged by his successor, PW — found that BJ always had deep knowledge of wrongdoings perpetrated in the name of the information scandal.

Had the cultural boycott not been in full swing and Frost could subject Vorster to an interrogation at the time, the latter would probably have been able to pronounce of Botha in his own characteristic drawl, just as Nixon first said of his political opponents: “I gave [him] a sword and [he] stuck it in. And [he] twisted it with relish. And, I guess, if I’d been in [his] position, I’d have done the same thing.” Having considered these examples, Pahad would have to admit that, despite his insistence that there is continuity in Jacob Zuma taking over the reins of the ANC and the country from Mbeki, the latter could definitely echo Nixon’s immortal words too. After all, Mbeki tried to pre-empt things by already getting his sword in, in 2005 after Zuma was implicated in arms deal corruption by the Durban High Court.

In September of last year though, Pietermaritzburg Judge Chris Nicholson found that the corruption case against Zuma was procedurally flawed and that political interference from Mbeki was apparent in the National Prosecuting Authority’s decision to charge Zuma. This, as we know, afforded Zuma the chance to bring Mbeki to a fall. Notwithstanding any satisfaction there was to be had from a subsequent appeal court finding earlier this year that Judge Nicholson’s finding went outside his jurisdiction, even Mbeki must have realised that the many unanswered questions around his presidency would keep his status as fallen leader firmly in place. Pahad may want to cling on to a key moment in the Frost/Nixon-encounter, where Nixon answers “well, when the president does it, that means that is not illegal”. It would be a false peace, though, for Mbeki has never been pardoned for any of the allegations against him in the way that Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Pahad would therefore serve his former boss well if, instead of peddling vague and ill-advised defences to protect his legacy, he used these examples from history to give his former boss some good and honest advice.

As Vorster and Botha’s altercation showed, things may change quicker than anticipated, despite a veneer of continuity. Though President Zuma has never appeared to be the vindictive type, it must be remembered that he emphasises leadership of the collective, and that there are still a number of actors in the wings baying for Mbeki’s blood. And just as the collective does not end with Zuma, the ANC will also not end with Zuma. There may therefore still be many future political ructions or court actions, which could prompt further investigation into issues such as the case against former police commissioner Jackie Selebi and the arms deal. Mbeki would therefore be well advised to take every step to win back the approval of the public at large.

In order to do this, Pahad would have to bring Mbeki to some form of acknowledgement that while they might feel his residency was squeaky clean, there are many who did not like its many unresolved controversies and its perceived darker aspects. Aside from every point that Pahad so unfortunately failed to defend at last week’s gathering at the UKZN, Mbeki would also have to display some reassuring frankness about a number of other questions. These include why he never instituted a full judicial inquiry into the arms deal when there was real concern over corruption on his watch. He should also say what he believes would constitute actual interference in the prosecuting authorities, and what assurances he could provide that he did not do it in the Zuma case or in the prosecution of Selebi.

Regardless of whether it is about rebuilding his image, about sensible civil participation or pure personal interest, Mbeki has registered a real desire for an active post-presidential career. There are also good reasons why he should have it. It is indeed to his credit that he led South Africa in its transition to a modern state against strong internal resistance. Like Nixon, Mbeki delivered some of his biggest triumphs on the diplomatic front. His continued efforts resulted in the African Union, the institution of the peer review mechanism and a much improved international position for South Africa through its inclusion in the United Nations Security Council and by securing the ear of the G8 group of nations.

These are the big successes of Mbeki’s presidency on the basis of which he, like Nixon, can serve in the interests of broader society going forward. Should Mbeki show a willingness to have the accusations against him confronted in public, there is no reason why he could not continue to serve the broader interests of society. This is, if it is in any way possible for him to exhibit the same non-partisanship that Nixon did. He voluntarily served both his Republican and Democratic successors with advice; critically reflected in his extensive biographical writings on his time in the presidency and did not let his personal or party-political proclivities exercise undue influence on his facilitation of foreign policy or peace negotiations. If not, Pahad should be frank enough to warn Mbeki that the best he may hope for is to become an increasingly lone voice in the wilderness.www.thoughtleader.co.za

Essop Pahad, the former minister in the Presidency, speaking in Durban on Tuesday, defended former president Thabo Mbeki's legacy.

Addressing an audience at UKZN's Howard College about Mbeki's term, Pahad also touched on Mbeki's successor President Jacob Zuma, saying that he was not new in the leadership of the ANC and the government.

You cannot do something the same way as your predecessor, there are opportunities for the new administration under Jacob Zuma to implement policies that would bring in a closer evaluation of ministers in Parliament. There's also room for improvement in terms of interpersonal relations between ministers and their deputies, and hopefully after the next election whoever comes in will try to improve upon the previous administration, Pahad said.

Centre for Civil Society (CCS) community scholar Molefi Ndlovu, who was critical of the Mbeki administration, said the main fundamentals of Mbeki's legacy were privatisation of state companies, support for Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's policies, Nepad and economic policies.

The social backlogs that the Zuma administration is faced with at the moment, are a legacy that the Mbeki administration has left behind, he said.

Responding to Ndlovu's comments, Pahad said that it was not possible to deliver all the services that were promised to South African citizens, in a period of 15 years.

Gaps left behind by the previous administration, should be filled by the administration that comes in to deliver on services needed by the people of South Africa.

Another critic and CCS community scholar Orlean Naidoo, expressed great concern on the issue of services that were not delivered to people who were not members of the ANC during Mbeki's term.

Ordinary citizens ended up defending their homes against policies that resulted in tariff hikes which resulted in the eviction of some and an increase of homelessness was noted, she said.

She also said that in the Mbeki administration, there were class divisions when it came to delivering services.

Pahad suggested socialism as an alternative, saying this would make it easier to deliver services to the community.

Someone in the audience posed a question about the slow pace of roll-out of antiretrovirals during Mbeki's administration although billions were pumped into the Department of Health for the fight against HIV and Aids.

Whether or not it was being used properly, is another matter. Whether you are HIV positive or negative, we are all going to die. Mbeki's administration fought against pharmaceuticals selling expensive drugs, Pahad said.

Someone else attending the talk asked Pahad about Mbeki's silence on Mugabe's policies. He replied that Mbeki had in fact criticised Mugabe's policies.

He added that although the former president criticised Mugabe's policies, he did however resist being used as a tool by the West pushing for a regime change in Zimbabwe.

This article was originally published on page 7 of The Daily News on August 05, 2009

Seminar with outsourced workers on the UKZN campus

Exploited Oppressed Over worked Under paid No respect No appreciation No satisfaction

That’s life for the workers who clean and protect our campusCleaners, Security, Gardners

COME AND HEAR THEIR STORY

• How to feed a family on less than R1 000 per month• How to sweep the campus pavements without a broom• How to clean the university floors without enough soap• How to work under threat of transfer to a faraway work site• How to live in fear, keep quiet even if you have grievances

COME TO THE SEMINAROrganized by the Centre for Civil Society & the UKZN Workers Forum

Compton, Robert (2008) American Academic Labour Unions: When the Struggle is Not So Local. CCS Seminar Series : -.More

van der Walt, Lucien & Bolsmann, Chris & Johnson, Bernadette & Martin, Lindsey (2002) On The Outsourced University: A survey of the rise of support service outsourcing in public sector higher education in South Africa, and its effects on workers and trade unions, 1994 - 2001. Sociology of Work Unit University of the Witwatersrand: 1-46.More

Democracy and Civil Society in Ghana & South Africa

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for a seminar on African politics

Seminar: Democracy and Civil Society Research in Ghana and SA: Work of the Georgetown CenterSpeaker: Barak HoffmanDate: Monday, 27 July 2009Time: 12:30-2pmVenue: CCS/SDS seminar room, Memorial Tower Building Room F208 University of KwaZulu-Natal Howard College Campus

In a shocking victory in Ghana’s 2008 presidential election, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) prevailed over the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) by one-half of one percentage point, after trailing far behind the NPP according to most opinion polls. What were the attributes of voters for each party? Standard theories about elections in Africa suggest that they are little more than ethnic headcounts and that parties typically are a thin cover for ethnicity. Data from a survey we conducted shortly before the 2008 seriously challenges this view. The NDC and the NPP drew support from a range of ethnic groups and there was little evidence of ethnic block voting. Moreover, while supporters of each party do not fit a clear ethnic profile, they possess strong beliefs about the parties. For these reasons we contend that the perceptions of the NDC and the NPP shaped the outcome of Ghana’s 2008 election far more than the ethnic identity of its candidates. What relevance do these findings have for South African politics? And how might a university research centre - especially one based in Washington, DC - contribute to the debate over the character of democracy and civil society in Africa?

Barak D. Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Civil Society at Georgetown University. Prior to coming to Georgetown, He was a research fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He has also worked as en economist at the United States Department of the Treasury and the United States Agency for International Development. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego, and his BA and MA in Economics from Brandeis University and Michigan State University, respectively.

Seminar on water rights

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for a seminar on water rights

What are the potentials and problematics of using litigation strategies to promote pro-poor water policies in South Africa? Various questions are raised by noting the double-edged sword of rights narratives. Can human rights strategies transform, or do they only legitimate, the status quo? Is there potential for critical/radical rights-based mobilization? How can we apply participatory research methodologies to empower activists in communities and use research and strategic planning to enable communities to challenge structural inequalities?

Sean Flynn - an American University School of Law Professor - and Participatory Researcher Maj Fiil were early participants in research and social movement organising in Johannesburg that led to the litigation against prepaid water meters that will be heard in September in the Constitutional Court. Flynn, educated at Harvard and a former employee of public interest Ralph Nader, was a clerk to Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson a decade ago, and is involved in social policy-related rights struggles across Africa. Educated in Denmark, Fiil helped establish the African Water Network of anti-privatisation movements from more than two dozen African countries and has worked across the world in public interest water advocacy.

(THIS SEMINAR WILL BE SKYPECAST. If interested in joining the discussion, please send a note to pbond@mail.ngo.za and be prepared to be rung for the skype conference at 12:20pm on Friday.)

The dictatorial junta running Burma is under intense pressure, after hauling Aung San Suu Kyi into court on ridiculous trumped up charges and refusing to let her see UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during his recent visit. The regime is making small concessions around constitutional negotiations, but the fate of Burmese democracy will be decided based upon internal movement strength plus international solidarity. At a crucial time for assessing conditions in Burma, CCS is delighted to host the main exiled opposition leader and national Prime Minister, Dr Sein Win, who will provide Durban and national/international listeners with new ideas on the strategies and tactics required for the non-violent democratic struggle.

Dr. Sein Win was elected Prime Minister following the formation of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) in Manerplaw (Karen State) on December 18, 1990. He was elected representative from Paukkaung Constituency, Pegu Division, in Burma’s May 1990 general elections. He is the son of U Ba Win, one of Burma’s top political leaders and elder brother of General Aung San, the architect of Burma’s independence and founder of the Burma Army, and first cousin of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democracy movement and 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate. U Ba Win and General Aung San were both assassinated by political rivals while the Cabinet was meeting on July 19, 1947, the eve of Burma’s independence.

Dr. Sein Win earned his Doctorate in Mathematics from Hamburg University in Germany. He taught at Colombo University in Sri Lanka, at Nairobi University in Kenya, and at Rangoon University in Burma. He became involved in politics when the military brutally cracked down on the people involved in the pro-democracy uprising of 1988. He is the chairman of the Party for National Democracy (PND). The party, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo as patrons was set up in 1988 as a backup party, if the military authorities decide to ban the National League for Democracy (NLD).

When the military junta refused to honor the election results and instead started arresting NLD leaders and elected representatives throughout the country, the NLD caucus held a series of secret meetings and decided to send some of its MPs to the liberated areas to form a provisional government. The main task of that legitimately elected government is to help restore democracy and human rights in Burma. Currently Dr. Sein Win is serving his fifth-term as Prime Minister of the NCGUB.

(Dr Win will be accompanied by a leader of the Free Burma Campaign South Africa, Johannesburg-based Dr Thein Win.)

SKYPECAST ACCESS: If you would like to be included in a skypecast, please contact pbond@mail.ngo.za as soon as possible - but no later than 21 July at noon South Africa time, to arrange it via 'patricksouthafrica' skype address.CONTACT:Helen Poonen, 260 3195

Dr Sein Win and Dr Thein Win at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society 21 July 2009

Dr Thein Win, Free Burma Campaign South Africa:

Thank you for joining us.

We were with Ela Gandhi at the Mahatma Gandhi award ceremony last night, which honored Aung San Suu Kyi. Dr Sein Win, our prime minister, accepted on her behalf.

Durban is an important site for solidarity with Burma. The regime's first major South African appearance after being granted official recognition in 1994 was here. We also had the first protest, on that occasion! Cosatu and the SA Communist Party have been strongly supporting our movement.

We also got strong verbal support and statements to free Aung San Suu Kyi, but that's as far as they have gone. Even former president Mbeki gave us support, but it was just rhetoric.

During that period, Ebrahim Ebrahim was head of parliament's foreign committee and there were hearings on our struggle, but they led nowhere.

We were dismayed in 2007 when in the UN Security Council, South Africa acted against us, voting down our resolution to put our freedom on the Security Council agenda. The reason given - that our problem was not a regional conflict but a local one - made no sense.

But in the new government, there is hope. As deputy foreign minister, Ebrahim Ebrahim called in the junta's representative recently to communicate the need for Aung San Suu Kyi's unconditional release, at the time her trial for violating house arrest conditions begans. They also suggested they could provide mediation services involving us as the liberation movement along with ethnic minorities and the regime. We don't think the regime will agree, however.

Yesterday, at the Gandhi award, we were very pleased that important public officials - Premier Zweli Mkhize, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim - all honored our prime minister. Mkhize said that it looks like there will be engagement on our behalf with the UN. So we are cautiously optimistic. Of course, if change occurs, it is in part due to the role of grassroots activitists. In 2007, there was massive criticism of deputy minister Aziz Pahad, including protests and international ridicule. We hope we do not go back to those dark days.

Let me introduce Prime Minister Sein Win.

Dr Sein Win, Prime Minister of the Burmese government in exile, the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma:

Thank you for inviting me.

Let me give you some basic background. The majority of our people are Burmans - 60% - and they occupy 50% of the land mass. We have Kachin in the North, Shan in the East, Karen in the Southeast, and many other ethnic groups; we have a very complex society. We need a solution where all the ethnic groups are satisfied. This has been proven in history, with armed conflicts arising because of the failure to address ethnic interests.

Why is Burma a special case requiring solidarity? There are many countries in Asia with armed forces which dominated the state. None is as bad as Burma. Others, like Thailand and Indonesia, have changed, with democratisation. Indonesian elections were held recently, and a former general was elected. In South Korea and Taiwan, the army gave way to democracy.

The Burmese military, however, has not reformed. In all those other countries, though they do not have a long tradition and experience with democracy, their economies grew, even during the military regimes.

However, in the case of Burma, our economic situation is deteriorating. In 1962, we were on par with Thailand. They have raced ahead, and we declined.

The young generation does not know this. In 1962 I matriculated and started my first year at Rangoon University, so I remember.

We missed the train, we missed modernisation, we missed democracy. Everything has gone down since then.

The military is clearly the problem.

To introduce myself, I was a teacher at Rangoon University, teaching mathematics. When in 1988, politics became possible, I joined my cousin Aung San Suu Kyi's party. In August, there were the famous massacres, with 10,000 killed, 3,000 in Rangoon alone on a single day, 8/8/88. Between 1962 and 1990 we had no elections. I was elected in one constituency, but the military halted democracy. Many of us went into exile to set up a government. This government in exile contains those members of parliament elected.

What Aung San Syu Kyi has asked for the whole time is democracy, dialogue and a peaceful transition. We expect a people's government will settle the problems in the society, by determining the fears and interests of our people.

But this will not come without a struggle. We wanted to use the United Nations mechanisms to improve the situation, so we have lobbied there since 1992. Every year the General Assembly has passed resolutions, but up to now, this has not budged the regime. We have a special envoy to the Secretary General, Mr Gambari, and very recently Ban Ki-moon himself came to Burma to meet Than Shwe, the head of the junta.

In 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi's convoy was attacked by a paramilitary, and she herself was nearly killed. She was put under house arrest, and now they are talking about putting her in prison.

From then, we were asking that the case be brought to the UN Security Council. We needed the help of the member countries, so we looked to see who would help us. We were hoping for civil society to help us, especially Archbishop Tutu, as well as other Nobel laureates. But we need country governments to support us. The US government was not a good choice for us, given its role as a superpower.

So we tried other countries, as well as the United Nations. But there, in 2007, we could not pass a resolution, because China and Russia vetoed it. We were shocked when South Africa supported that veto. We know why China vetoed it, they work closely with the regime. But we don't like the Burma-Russia connection either. The military junta is trying to build a nuclear reactor with Russia's help. We don't need a nuclear reactor, we have enough oil and gas, and we could build hydroelectric power. We have suspicion about their motives of building a nuclear reactor now.

So we are stuck at the UN Security Council. We will keep on trying, but at present it is stuck.

Second, we tried to get sanctions against the regime from various countries. We got from the EU a 'common position', such as visa restrictions. But the EU does not want to impose economic sanctions. The neighbouring countries are not for sanctions. Burma is a very poor country, with an agricultural base. Most products are natural resources - oil, forest products, agriculture and minerals - but the main thing is that we are in a strategic geographic position. Our neighbours have interests. India's 'Look East' policy includes relations with the Association of SE Asian Nations, and India wants to build an Asian highway, and control unrest in the northeast, and India is also interested in whether China moves further into Burma. Chinese interests in Burma include geography - it is the shortest route to the Indian Ocean. So Burma is at the cross-roads of Asia and the generals are exploiting this interest. Are sanctions going to work? We are reconsidering this difficult situation. We are now saying we want 'selective sanctions', which are more surgical and pointed against the military leadership.

The third factor is protest from inside. We had a major uprising, especially by monks, in 2007, and the military's repression of that resistance was severe. Our job is to generate solidarity for the protesters.

Where does that leave us today? What are our prospects? Right now the prospects for democracy are low. They are likely to imprison Aung San Suu Kyi, on a trumped up charge of 3-5 years in prision.

The military claims that in 2010 there will be an election. They want us to forget about our 1990 electoral victory. Than Shwe even told Ban Ki-moon, visit us again and you may find me as a civilian. So what is our position?

Ok, we don't look backwards at the 1990 election, we will look forward. If the election is free and fair, we will compete. The problem is that the election is tied to a constitution written by the military. If it is tied to this constitution, then it willl have no meaning. Consider four reasons we expect problems.

The first is that the commander in chief will appoint 25% of the seats in parliament.

Second, there is no chance to amend the constitution.

Third, the constitution calls for the next leader to have military experience, which disqualifies Aung San Suu Kyi.

Fourth, the constitution allows the military to take over, to have a coup.

The NLD position is that this is not a good constitution. The regime says that 94% of the people support this constitution, something we disagree with.

All countries should send a clear message that this is not acceptable.

So far, the UN has not interfered. But Ban Ki-moon has said that the 2010 election should be 'credible.' The word has many meanings. Ban Ki-moon says the constitution should not influence the election, because the constitution is so unjust.

Many of us outside the country say we will not accept this election, and neither will many political parties inside the country. This is what I'm trying to tell governments, that the army wants to pretend to hand over power while still staying in power! That is the situation now.

The military rank and file are not united, with many desertions. But Burma has many child soldiers working in the arumy.

The situation is fluid, but we need a great deal more support from outside Burma.

Young activists who left Burma are now in Thailand. Political prisoners inside Burma get support. The ethnic Karen guerrillas get support. The Thai government does not give us formal support so we must act clandestinely. There are many illegal refugees, living with a false passport. There are many organisations in civil society and the media, including a radio station broadcasting shortwave and satellite television from Oslo, reaching Burma. We also rely on BBC, VoA and Radio Free Asia to get our message about what's happening outside and inside. We have strong independent media, partly thanks to the Norwegians. These are examples of people-to-people support.

In 1992 we started to build the Free Burma Campaign chapters across the world. They succeeded in getting widespread sanctions by 1997, starting in the United States. Already, however, Unocal was there exploring for oil. We forced them to leave, because of a lawsuit. The settlement they won was a confession that they were wrong. Chevron then took its place so we are working on that company.

The sanctions movement is growing, but to be very frank, there are holes in the sanctions. In 1988 there was only 3 months' worth of foreign exchange reserves. They survive by selling Burmese resources, including money laundering and drugs. We hoped we could squeeze them. One strategy was the Massachusetts selective purchasing law. The state decided to not give any contract to companies investing in Burma. The case was very important, but unfortunately there were legal challenges to the law, and we lost it. We hoped that law would be expanded to other states, but the US Supreme Court ruled it illegal.

Then the military regime found offshore oil, which gives them $3 billion annually. So to squeeze them on trade is also difficult since our neighbours trade. Still, we are trying to get more sanctions, especially against the military. The European networks are especially strong, and they meet twice a year to decide their actions and sanctions targets.

There is the Asian InterParliamentary Forum for Burma, with elected officials who formed a support group. Since Asian governments are reluctant to criticise the Burmese military, we have appreciated individual parliamentarians.

There is also people-to-people activism from the trade unions.

Let me add two things. One is the drug problem, and the other is the relationship to North Korea. There is opium and we are second to Afghanistan. They are also producing amphetamines. There are also ethnic groups in these areas. Many ethnic groups have armed forces. The most powerful is the Wa ethnic group, with 25,000 men under arms. They are very strong, and have a ceasefire with the military, since 1989. In 2010 the military is saying there should be only one armed force in Burma, and they are asking the Wa to become a border force. There is a tension between the ethnic groups and the military. This relates to the military's reliance on drugs.

The North Korean government had a role in bombing a South Korean official, so that meant no relations. But now there are diplomatic relations. The military regime looked at Indonesia as a model, but after Suharto was thrown out, they have changed their opinion. Now they look at North Korea as a model. We are worried about the nuclear capacity. There is also a controvesy around tunnels being built with the help of North Korean engineers - for what, we are asking. North Korean ships have gone to Rangoon, as well.

If in ten years Burma gets nuclear technology, this will create regional instability

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS:

Thein Win:I also want to share the need for grassroots activities here, because international politics are not helpful now. We are participating in all the solidarity campaigns here, like Palestine and Western Sahara and Swaziland and Stop the War against Iraq and Afghanistan. We appreciate all the solidarity activism.

Sein Win:The support base for the generals is very weak, aside from the army. The troops follow their orders very loyally, and if ordered to shoot, they will shoot. People are mainly farmers. People have difficulty getting water and electricity for cooking. Day to day survival is a challenge. So to organise for mass power is difficult. Yet support for the military regime is from a very small group.

Thein Win:The Free Burma Campaign South Africa includes Myo Naing and myself as the main activists and we have support from Graham Bailey, David Kramer, Dale McKinley, Patrick Bond and a few other activists. But even if it is a small group, our campaigning and especially our allies in Europe and the US have done remarkable work, for example, pulling Coca Cola out of Burma. This is because of pressure from universities in the US. In Asia we have Free Burma Campaigns in several countries. We help each other where we can. And we also help other exiles.www.freeburmacampaignsouthafrica.org.za

On the Promise and Perils of Citizenship: Zimbabwean Farm Worker Struggles on the Eve of Jambanja

Increasingly, struggles in the name of citizenship have emerged in southern Africa, intertwining with claims on the state as well as sub-national and multi-national authorities. To analyse how new social citizenship claims can grip, embolden and channel struggles in particular directions with varied results – the promise and perils of citizenship more broadly – we should pay attention to intermediaries and promulgators of such visions of citizenship, the techniques of promoting their claims, and the cultural politics and political economies of belonging, in locales of those being hailed and targeted. Drawing on a detailed example of a farm worker struggle in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Zimbabwe, I explore how such a dialogic analysis can explain how citizenship has become a highly politicized object of struggle since the 1990s, one that has led to new conflicts, alliances, and governmental interventions. By exploring some of the practices, techniques, and registers of these citizenship struggles in regards to farm workers in Zimbabwe and southern Africa more broadly, I aim to attend to wider shifts in the political importance of citizenship as well as its entanglement in particular localities. Through an examination of how farm workers are situated through such struggles, I show the promise and limits of citizenship in addressing social justice concerns of a group historically marginalized through racialized, classed, and gendered processes in a neoliberal and, in some instances, politically oppressive social landscape.

Blair Rutherford teaches in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology, the Institute of Political Economy and is the Director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Since 1992, he has carried out research on the politics of land, labour, and citizenship in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, beginning with research on farm workers in Zimbabwe and currently focusing on undocumented Zimbabwean migrants in northern South Africa. He is the author of Working on the Margins (Zed Books, 2001) and has published widely in a number of academic and more popular journals.

Community resistance to energy privatisation and ecological degradation

In a paper presented to the International Conference on Ideas and Strategies in the Alterglobalisation Movement at the Gyeongsang University Institute for Social Sciences, in Seoul late last month, Trevor Ngwane discusses South Africa's energy crisis, as seen from below and above. He tracks long-running battles between community organisations and state electricity suppliers. He argues that en route to a renewable energy future, the leading social forces can amplify campaigning for ‘decommodification’ (free basic electricity as a human right) and ‘deglobalization’ of capital within the energy sector, by highlighting multinational corporate abuse of state resources, especially cheap electricity. These campaigns might follow other inspiring social movements which have won access to AIDS medicines and repelled water privatisation. A South African red-green politics would link cheaper consumption of basic-needs electricity – especially by low-income people (in contrast to gluttonous smelters and mines) – to our need to curtail production of electricity in massive coal-fired generators (to be augmented by nuclear in coming years) due to the climate crisis.

Trevor Ngwane is a CCS post-grad student who was formerly a trade union organiser and Wits sociology lecturer. He is also secretary of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee.

At central Durban's busiest intersection, Warwick Junction's Early Morning Market is a facility that has thrived for nearly a century. Initially, Indian traders and then all black people found an outlet for their garden vegetables and other goods. This historic market, so crucial to the lives of several thousand traders and their dependents, is under attack from gentrifiers: bureaucrats led by city manager Michael Sutcliffe and a for-profit developer intent on importing national name-brand shops. The 2010 World Cup is the excuse to 'clean' the area of 'criminals' and 'upgrade' the infrastructure. The officials argue that black working-class consumers need this mall for their convenience and prestige. Critics say that traders will be priced out of their livelihood, will be unable to afford rentals, and will be prevented from supplying reasonably-priced perishable goods to commuters who cannot afford products offered by corporate retailers. With the might of the police already arrayed against the poor - such as in the tear-gassing of market traders last Saturday night and the closure of the market last Wednesday - how will traders respond in coming days? Some of the leading activists and their supporters will use this seminar to discuss the current balance of forces, strategies and tactics.

Our discussants: Gaby Bikombo is a trader from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who cofounded the Eye association. Judy Mulqueeny is an eThekwini councillor who is also active in the SA Communist Party and the anti-xenophobia movement. Harry Ramlal is a leader of the Early Morning Market Association and a key negotiator in the current conflict. Caroline Skinner is an academic at the UKZN School of Development Studies who has conducted extensive research on the Warwick market.

Three innovative artists will kick a ball across the African continent from South Africa to France, leading up to the Football World-Cup 2010, hosted in Africa for the first time in history. The game strategy will be a relay of on location participatory artistic process, exploring ideas linking one city to another, leaving behind a trail of actions and reactions, where each step informs the next. Inventive and enthusiastic football supporters and their clubs will be central as resources and catalysts. Consequently the artists will initiate encounters with “those who make it where they are” - the local artists, musicians, dancers, poets and other inhabitants. An audio and visual journal will give insight to the aspirations and spirit of these collaborations, and will result in installations, exhibitions, publications and films for international distribution. The game and nature of football will be used as a basis for our organic planning - a interesting paradox, one that encapsulates the spirit of the project, where strategies and ideas, as in football, may give way to intuitive interaction. The ball - seen as a way of life, passing from one to the other, inter-dependence, the essence of the African philosophy of Ubuntu, the individual in concert, complementary energy created through exchange, the art of living What are we kicking at? What is the ball? Whose kicking it? Where to? These are the questions the artists will be sharing. As it goes, does the ball transform into a tin can, a plastic bottle, a wall, a pathway, a feeling or a preoccupation at a point in time? What is the game plan that people conceive to confront the challenges, conform to uplifting possibilities and confirm life through innovation? Is there another way to play the game when the goal posts are continually moving? The project aims to explore alternative thoughts, show portraits of people and the creative strategies that they bring into play to resolve local problems, those who initiate other philosophies and concepts, who implement new ideas into life-styles. Over the past eight years, living between Durban and Marseille, the artists have been linked through artistic exchanges, residency programs, exhibitions, outdoor installations, multimedia and film.

The project brings together three organizations in a trans-continental initiative; Dala (art/architecture/activism in Durban) represented by Doung Anwar Jahangeer, Twasa (photographer collective in Johannesburg) represented by Peter McKenzie and Les Pas Perdus (multi disciplinary art fabric in Marseille) represented by Guy-André Lagesse. Their art continually questions its role, relevance, consequence and functions in conjunction with a broad spectrum of civil society.

Contesting Johannesburg extractive industries

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society fora seminar on Contesting Johannesburg's extractive industries

World City Research has been criticised for its hierarchical, static andwestern centric approach as well as a neglect of some of the importantinteractions between scales of governance. I am intending to undertake acase study of Johannesburg, South Africa, that traces the city'sconnections to a variety of other places to which it is closely tied.These places will not be limited to the so called Global Cities butinclude the urban and the rural, east and west, global south and north.The study thus does not attempt to construct one global network of worldcities, but a network that has as a specific starting point,Johannesburg, and is centred around this place. This specificsub-network is part of a globally diffused and decentralised network ofnetworks, of which powerful world cities are a part, but by no means theonly one. Extractive industries are an elementary ingredient of theworld economy and a major industry for many countries in the globalsouth. Using the primary sector for the analysis is thus also an attemptto return to the origins of world city research in world systems theory,which means an analysis of globally uneven exchanges, an aspect whichhas seemingly disappeared from contemporary world city research. Theresearch will be constructed around two central question: 1) How is thecity of Johannesburg integrated into the world economy through theresource sector and what are the primary connections to other places? 2)How do individual and institutional actors in the city of Johannesburgwork to articulate and strengthen these linkages?

Björn Surborg is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography,University of British Columbia. His research interests are located somewhere around the intersection between urban and regional studies and development studies. While he focused in his previous work on the development of the internet in Vietnam, his attention has shifted more recently to a critical review of Johanesburg's position in the world economy. He is currently deputy editor of the journal City - analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action.

'Racism and Whiteness''Racism and Whiteness'

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for a seminar, 'Racism and Whiteness'

Radical activist, public intellectual and journalist, Robert Jensen is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen is a powerful and inspiring speaker and dissects the multifaceted nature of US power. Jensen's latest book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, is published by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2001); and co-author with Gail Dines and Ann Russo of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge, 1998). He was co-editor with David S. Allen of Freeing the First Amendment: Critical Perspectives on Freedom of Expression (New York University Press, 1995).

This essay is excerpted from The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege, City Lights, September 2005.

posted on Alternet, August 31, 2005.by Robert Jensen

The United States is a white country. By that I don't just mean that the majority of its citizens are white, though they are (for now but not forever). What makes the United States white is not the fact that most Americans are white but the assumption -- especially by people with power -- that American equals white. Those people don't say it outright. It comes out in subtle ways. Or, sometimes, in ways not so subtle.

Here's an example: I'm in line at a store, unavoidably eavesdropping on two white men in front of me, as one tells the other about a construction job he was on. He says: There was this guy and three Mexicans standing next to the truck. From other things he said, it was clear that this guy was Anglo, white, American. It also was clear from the conversation that this man had not spoken to the three Mexicans and had no way of knowing whether they were Mexicans or U.S. citizens of Mexican heritage.

It didn't matter. The guy was the default setting for American: Anglo, white. The three Mexicans were not Anglo, not white, and therefore not American. It wasn't four guys standing by a truck. It was a guy and three Mexicans. The race and/or ethnicity of the four men were irrelevant to the story he was telling. But the storyteller had to mark it. It was important that the guy not be confused with the three Mexicans.

Here's another example, from the Rose Garden. At a 2004 news conference outside the White House, President George W. Bush explained that he believed democracy would come to Iraq over time:

There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.

It appears the president intended the phrase people whose skin color may not be the same as ours to mean people who are not from the United States. That skin color he refers to that is ours, he makes it clear, is white. Those people not from the United States are a different color than white. So, white is the skin color of the United States. That means those whose skin is not white but are citizens of the United States are ...? What are they? Are they members in good standing in the nation, even if their skin color may not be the same as ours?

This is not simply making fun of a president who sometimes mangles the English language. This time he didn't misspeak, and there's nothing funny about it. He did seem to get confused when he moved from talking about skin color to religion (does he think there are no white Muslims?), but it seems clear that he intended to say that brown people -- Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims, people from the Middle East, whatever the category in his mind -- can govern themselves, even though they don't look like us. And us is clearly white. In making this magnanimous proclamation of faith in the capacities of people in other parts of the world, in proclaiming his belief in their ability to govern themselves, he made one thing clear: The United States is white. Or, more specifically, being a real American is being white. So, what do we do with citizens of the United States who aren't white?

That's the question for which this country has never quite found an answer: What do white Americans do with those who share the country but aren't white? What do we do with peoples we once tried to exterminate? People we once enslaved? People we imported for labor and used like animals to build railroads? People we still systematically exploit as low-wage labor? All those people -- indigenous, African, Asian, Latino -- can obtain the legal rights of citizenship. That's a significant political achievement in some respects, and that popular movements that forced the powerful to give people those rights give us the most inspiring stories in U.S. history.

The degree to which many white people in one generation dramatically shifted their worldview to see people they once considered to be subhuman as political equals is not trivial, no matter how deep the problems of white supremacy we still live with.In many comparable societies, problems of racism are as ugly, if not uglier, than in the United States. If you doubt that, ask a Turk what it is like to live in Germany, an Algerian what it's like to live in France, a black person what it's like to live in Japan. We can acknowledge the gains made in the United States -- always understanding those gains came because non-white people, with some white allies, forced society to change -- while still acknowledging the severity of the problem that remains. <>

But it doesn't answer the question: What do white Americans do with those who share the country but aren't white? <>

We can pretend that we have reached the end of racism and continue to ignore the question. But that's just plain stupid. We can acknowledge that racism still exists and celebrate diversity, but avoid the political, economic, and social consequences of white supremacy. But, frankly, that's just as stupid. The fact is that most of the white population of the United States has never really known what to do with those who aren't white. Let me suggest a different approach. <>

Let's go back to the question that W.E.B. Du Bois said he knew was on the minds of white people. In the opening of his 1903 classic, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois wrote that the real question whites wanted to ask him, but were afraid to, was: How does it feel to be a problem? Du Bois was identifying a burden that blacks carried -- being seen by the dominant society not as people but as a problem people, as a people who posed a problem for the rest of society. Du Bois was right to identify the color line as the problem of the 20th century. Now, in the 21st century, it is time for whites to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question at heart of color. It's time for white people to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, we are the problem. We have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be the problem? <>

The simple answer: Not very good.

That is the new White People's Burden, to understand that we are the problem, come to terms with what that really means, and act based on that understanding. Our burden is to do something that doesn't seem to come natural to people in positions of unearned power and privilege: Look in the mirror honestly and concede that we live in an unjust society and have no right to some of what we have. We should not affirm ourselves. We should negate our whiteness. Strip ourselves of the illusion that we are special because we are white. Steel ourselves so that we can walk in the world fully conscious and try to see what is usually invisible to us white people. We should learn to ask ourselves, How does it feel to be the problem?

Why White People Are AfraidBy Robert Jensen, AlterNet 7 June 2006.

What do white people have to be afraid of in a world structured on white privilege? Their own fears.

It may seem self-indulgent to talk about the fears of white people in a white-supremacist society. After all, what do white people really have to be afraid of in a world structured on white privilege? It may be self-indulgent, but it's critical to understand because these fears are part of what keeps many white people from confronting ourselves and the system.

The first, and perhaps most crucial, fear is that of facing the fact that some of what we white people have is unearned. It's a truism that we don't really make it on our own; we all have plenty of help to achieve whatever we achieve. That means that some of what we have is the product of the work of others, distributed unevenly across society, over which we may have little or no control individually. No matter how hard we work or how smart we are, we all know -- when we are honest with ourselves -- that we did not get where we are by merit alone. And many white people are afraid of that fact.

A second fear is crasser: White people's fear of losing what we have -- literally the fear of losing things we own if at some point the economic, political, and social systems in which we live become more just and equitable. That fear is not completely irrational; if white privilege -- along with the other kinds of privilege many of us have living in the middle class and above in an imperialist country that dominates much of the rest of the world -- were to evaporate, the distribution of resources in the United States and in the world would change, and that would be a good thing. We would have less. That redistribution of wealth would be fairer and more just. But in a world in which people have become used to affluence and material comfort, that possibility can be scary.

A third fear involves a slightly different scenario -- a world in which non-white people might someday gain the kind of power over whites that whites have long monopolized. One hears this constantly in the conversation about immigration, the lingering fear that somehow they (meaning not just Mexican-Americans and Latinos more generally, but any non-white immigrants) are going to keep moving to this country and at some point become the majority demographically.

Even though whites likely can maintain a disproportionate share of wealth, those numbers will eventually translate into political, economic, and cultural power. And then what? Many whites fear that the result won't be a system that is more just, but a system in which white people become the minority and could be treated as whites have long treated non-whites. This is perhaps the deepest fear that lives in the heart of whiteness. It is not really a fear of non-white people. It's a fear of the depravity that lives in our own hearts: Are non-white people capable of doing to us the barbaric things we have done to them?

A final fear has probably always haunted white people but has become more powerful since the society has formally rejected overt racism: The fear of being seen, and seen-through, by non-white people. Virtually every white person I know, including white people fighting for racial justice and including myself, carries some level of racism in our minds and hearts and bodies. In our heads, we can pretend to eliminate it, but most of us know it is there. And because we are all supposed to be appropriately anti-racist, we carry that lingering racism with a new kind of fear: What if non-white people look at us and can see it? What if they can see through us? What if they can look past our anti-racist vocabulary and sense that we still don't really know how to treat them as equals? What if they know about us what we don't dare know about ourselves? What if they can see what we can't even voice?

I work in a large university with a stated commitment to racial justice. All of my faculty colleagues, even the most reactionary, have a stated commitment to racial justice. And yet the fear is palpable.

It is a fear I have struggled with, and I remember the first time I ever articulated that fear in public. I was on a panel with several other professors at the University of Texas discussing race and politics in the O.J. Simpson case. Next to me was an African American professor. I was talking about media; he was talking about the culture's treatment of the sexuality of black men. As we talked, I paid attention to what was happening in me as I sat next to him. I felt uneasy. I had no reason to be uncomfortable around him, but I wasn't completely comfortable. During the question-and-answer period -- I don't remember what question sparked my comment -- I turned to him and said something like, It's important to talk about what really goes on between black and white people in this country. For instance, why am I feeling afraid of you? I know I have no reason to be afraid, but I am. Why is that?

My reaction wasn't a crude physical fear, not some remnant of being taught that black men are dangerous (though I have had such reactions to black men on the street in certain circumstances). Instead, I think it was that fear of being seen through by non-white people, especially when we are talking about race. In that particular moment, for a white academic on an O.J. panel, my fear was of being exposed as a fraud or some kind of closet racist.

Even if I thought I knew what I was talking about and was being appropriately anti-racist in my analysis, I was afraid that some lingering trace of racism would show through, and that my black colleague would identify it for all in the room to see. After I publicly recognized the fear, I think I started to let go of some of it. Like anything, it's a struggle. I can see ways in which I have made progress. I can see that in many situations I speak more freely and honestly as I let go of the fear. I make mistakes, but as I become less terrified of making mistakes I find that I can trust my instincts more and be more open to critique when my instincts are wrong.

New water wars, from city to countryside

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society fora seminar about water and civil society

Since the April 2000 battle of Cochabamba, Bolivia, most of the major struggles over the control of water have been in urban settings, focusing on the privatization [or corporate takeover] of public water systems. Yet, with the explosion of mega cities around the world, notably in the global south, established urban water sources are rapidly drying up, thereby creating conditions for a massive transfer of freshwater from the countryside. In effect, more and more freshwater is being stolen from the lands traditionally occupied by peasants and indigenous peoples, thus setting the stage for major conflicts with urban workers. The case of Mexico will be used to illustrate this emerging phenomena and how work is being done to re-organize and re-unite urban workers with rural peasants and indigenous around a common struggle for water justice.

Tony Clarke is the founder and director of the Polaris Institute in Canada which works with social movements in developing strategies and tools for social change on water, energy and trade policy issues. He holds a masters and doctorate in social ethics from the University of Chicago and is the author or co-author of several books including Blue Gold: The Battle Against the Corporate Theft of the World's Water [2002; Inside the Bottle: Exposing the Bottled Water Industry [2005/7]; and Tar Sands Showdown: Canada and the new Politics of Oil in an Age of Climate Change [2008]. In 2005, he was awarded Sweden's Right Livelihood Award [better known as the 'alternative Nobel prize'] for his contributions to the global water and trade justice movements.

This seminar addresses the problem of a cosmetic elite in Africa. We consider whether the Marxist construct of class remains relevant in the struggle for total liberation from the fetters of the Colonial Capitalist Mode of Production which continues to nurture white supremacist ideology and gross socio-economic disparities across the continent. Capitalism produces and reproduces itself as an antagonistic structure of class relations; it divides the population again and again into antagonistic classes. Within the material and social relations are produced and reproduced the material conditions of existence. Marxist analysis maintains that the prior distribution of the means of production distinguishes classes between the ‘possessors’ and the ‘dispossessed’. The historical incorporation of Africa and its non-capitalist systems into an evolving capitalist mode of production has resulted in an even more complex set of class relations. The predominate mode of production in most of Africa remains the Colonial Capitalist Mode of Production. No class analysis of Africa is complete without considering this basic fact. In all regions on the continent, social class formations survive only as long as they complement Colonial relations of production.

Molefi Mafereka Ndlovu is a CCS Community Scholar, in 2008 named as one of South Africa's leading 100 youth by the Mail&Guardian.

Communities coping with climate change

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for a seminar about climate change, mitigation and adaptation in local communities

The world already feels the influence of human-caused climate change. Even if carbon emissions were reduced to point zero this afternoon, there will still be extreme impacts on human health and the ability to sustain livelihoods, particularly in Africa. It is enormously important to focus on mitigation to ensure that atmospheric carbon is kept low, but it is also crucial that the world begins to develop coping mechanisms for the many projected impacts. Adaptation to climate change would need to include such measures as seeking alternative crops or alternative farming methods for commercial farmers, altering development lines along the coast and changing industrial and domestic behaviour to be able to cope with reduced water availability. Adaptation will also need to focus on subsistence communities, where households rely directly on natural resources for at least part of their livelihoods. For example, changing rainfall regimes will affect crop success or water availability, and biodiversity range shifts will affect access to wild food. These rural communities who are least responsible for climate change will be among the most affected, but are currently also among the most ignored in planning around climate change.

Rehana Dada is an environment and science broadcast journalist with interests in climate change. She is working on a masters degree with the Centre for Civil Society, School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal, where she co-edited the book Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society (UKZN Press, 2009): www.ukznpress.co.za

The Chatsworth community's justice struggles are decades old but since mid-1998 took on renewed importance by heralding the rise of SA's new social movements. After a decade of combat with the municipality over water, electricity, housing and other grievances, the communities began registering victories in the upgrading of their area.

Joan Canela i Barrull is a Catalonian journalist. During the 90’s he wasa member of the squatters movement in Barcelona, and a spokesperson ofthe Barcelona Squatters Assembly (Assemblea d’Okupes de Barcelona),based in the neighborhood assembly of Sants (ABS) where cofounded thenewspaper La Burxa. At 2005 he cofounded a weekly newspaper of all thesocial movements of Catalonia and the world, Directa.

Helena Olcina i Amigo is a graphic designer, photographer and socialactivist from Valencia, where she campaigned against the NATO militarybase. In 2000 she was coeditor of L’Avanç, the first publication ofValencia social movements, and in 2004 she moved to Barcelona to writefor La Burxa. She has designed hundred of placards and websites for thesocial movements in Catalonia.

Both have traveled widely in Europe and Latin America (Bolivia,Venezuela, Brazil and Mexico) to report on social movements.

The Tamil people under seige

Seminar: The Tamil people under seigeSpeakers: Three representatives of the Tamil liberation movement youthDate: Tuesday, 21 April 2009Time: 12:30-2pmVenue: CCS/SDS seminar room, Memorial Tower Building Room F208University of KwaZulu-Natal Howard College CampusQueries: poonenh@ukzn.ac.za or 031-260-3195

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for the right to self-determination of tha Tamil people of Sri Lanka since 1982. This liberation struggle like most others, was born from the discrimination and violence perpetrated against the ethnic Tamil society by the Sihala dominated Sri Lankan Government since the country gained independance. After achieveing no success in demanding equal rights through political and peaceful means, the Tamil youth took up arms.

The delegation consists of Tamil youth activists from Canada, UK and Australia. They are in South Africa hoping to lobby support from the South African Government and community for the Tamil cause.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, commonly known as the Tamil Tigers have been fighting for the right to self-determination of tha Tamil people of Sri Lanka since 1982. This liberation struggle like most others, was born from the discrimination and violence perpetrated against the ethnic Tamil society by the Sihala dominated Sri Lankan Government since the country gained independance. After achieveing no success in demanding equal rights through political and peaceful means, the Tamil youth took up arms.

The delegation to the Centre for Civil Society consists of Tamil youth activists from Canada, UK and Australia. They are in South Africa hoping to lobby support from the South African Government and community for the Tamil cause.

The Tamils need supportGreen Left Weekly Editorial 18 April 2009

*One of the great crimes of modern times is occurring on the island of Sri Lanka without a word of protest from governments the world over. The Tamil people are facing genocide.*

Already this year, the death toll of Tamil civilians exceeds 4000. Often dozens, and in some cases hundreds, are slaughtered in a single day in Sri Lankan Army (SLA) bombings of the so-called safe zone, into which as many as300,000 people are crowded.

Those Tamils who flee this zone are being placed into concentration camps by the SLA.

This brutal reality is almost entirely unreported, and not simply because the Sri Lankan government refuses to allow journalists access to the scene of its crime. Instead, the mainstream media is once again siding with the powerful.

When the issue is reported at all, the Sri Lankan government’s propaganda is repeated — the propaganda of a regime that refuses to allow a free press, with one of the world’s highest rates of journalists being murdered each year.

According to Sri Lankan propaganda, the military are merely fighting “terrorism”. It claims its war is merely against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an armed group fighting for an independent Tamil homeland in the island’s east and north.

Yet Sri Lanka’s actions prove its war is against the Tamil people as a whole.

The actions of the LTTE are a response to the decades of discrimination and violent repression meted out to the Tamil minority by a state dominated by the majority Sinhalese ethnic group. Support for armed struggle grew among Tamils in response to the violent anti-Tamil pogroms in 1983 that killed more than 3000 people.

The solution to ending the decades-long war on the island, and bringing about desperately needed peace, is to end the oppression of the Tamil people.

First, and most urgently, there must be a permanent ceasefire declared. The mass killings must be ended. Food and medical supplies must be allowed into the “safe-zone”, without which aid agencies are warning of a terrible humanitarian crisis.

The Tamil people must regain their freedom of movement — the concentration camps must be closed.

Once this occurs, the conditions for a negotiated settlement to the crisis, which can resolve the issue of self-determination for the Tamil people, will exist.

However, powerful governments, in defense of powerful interests, are allowing the Tamil people to be sacrificed. In return, the powerful are manoeuvring for access to lucrative shipping routes and ports.

To avoid upsetting the racist and undemocratic regime in Colombo, that regime is allowed a free hand to implement a “final solution” to the Tamil question. Once again, the corporate elite is placing profit over human life.

People around the world who believe in social justice must raise their voices. The Tamil diaspora is desperately attempting to bring the plight of its people to the world’s attention. In their hundreds of thousands, they have marched in cities around the globe.

In India, dozens of Tamils have self-immolated to bring attention to the situation. In Australia, six young Tamils went on hunger strike for almost a week. They refused food or water, with a serious risk of death, in an appeal to the Australian government to press Sri Lanka to call a permanent ceasefire.

We cannot let them stand alone. Those who believe in social justice — political parties, trade unions, churches, social movements — must speak out against the atrocities occurring right now.

The powerful have abandoned the Tamil people, it must be ordinary people all over the world who use their power to force action.

When Israel levelled Gaza, millions marched in opposition. That movement must continue, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign seeking to isolate apartheid Israel is beginning to have effect. But that display of “people power” needs to be repeated on behalf of the Tamils.

International solidarity helped end apartheid in South Africa, despite Western governments siding with the regime. It helped the East Timorese win their independence, despite Western governments — including Australia — siding with Indonesia.

It is placing Israel on the back foot, despite the most powerful nations on Earth backing the oppressors of the Palestinian people.

Now, international solidarity must be mobilised to save the Tamil people and stop the genocide.www.greenleft.org.au

Environmental confrontations - Political parties meet civil society

Seminar: Environmental confrontations - Political parties meet civil societySpeakers: Leading eco-social spokespersons from political parties and civil societyDate: POSTPONEDTime: 2-5pmVenue: Howard College Auditorium, University of KwaZulu-Natal Howard College Campus

We are fortunate that at short notice, a number of prominent environmentalists from SA political parties (including the ruling party's head of policy) and Durban civil society can lock horns in constructive debate. The parties have skilled spokespersons who know environmental problems and policies, and know what change they want from the state.

But probably no one knows the health of the environment better than victims of corporate malfeasance and state neglect in civil society. Durban suffers a myriad of eco-catastrophes, and CCS are honored to have the presence of leading advocates from communities witnessing pollution, climate change, inadequate water/sanitation, unsafe energy, bad housing and healthcare, land dispossession and other immediate red/green environmental crises.

PRESENTATION ON MINING AND RESISTANCE AT XOLOBENI - 5-5:30pmA film and briefing session by Sinegugu Zukulu, of Sustaining the Wild Coast, a group that is in struggle against an Australian mining house intent on stripping Xolobeni of its titanium, thus wrecking its social and environmental fabric

The 1960s-90s sports boycott of apartheid was one of the most successfulsustained campaigns of international solidarity. One central figure wasDennis Brutus (CCS Honorary Professor), who prevented all-white SouthAfrican teams from playing in the Olympics from 1968 onwards. Anotherwho made rugy and cricket impossible between New Zealand and apartheidSouth Africa was John Minto.

Minto is a political activist who was spokesperson for HART - the NewZealand Anti-Apartheid Movement - during the 1980s, and a leader of thecampaign to stop the 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand. Early last yearMinto was in the SA news for rejecting nomination for government'sOliver Tambo award, on grounds that African National Congress economicpolicies oppress the majority. Minto has been a high school teacher forthe last 25 years, and currently works for Unite Union – a trade unionfor low-paid workers in New Zealand. He is also a spokesperson forGlobal Peace and Justice Auckland and is National Chairperson of theQuality Public Education Coalition.

John Minto speaks at UKZN

The legendary New Zealand sports and anti-apartheid activist John Minto gave a seminar at UKZN on April 16, covering civil society analysis, strategies and tactics associated with cricket and rugby boycotts during the 1970s-80s. Minto was introduced by Honorary Professor Dennis Brutus, himself a lead figure in anti-apartheid sports activism.

As a result of the activism against a 1981 tour, Springbok rugby never played a major country again. The impact on New Zealand relations with the Maori people was profound. NZ official rugby had earlier agreed to implement apartheid - by refusing Maori players a chance to play - during its own tours of South Africa in the 1960s. By 1970 the Maoris were allowed 'honorary white' status, which we said was demeaning and tokenistic. The Maori people also challenged us to turn the anti-apartheid movement into an anti-racism movement. This led to a huge conscientisation of NZ society.

Minto also criticised the rise of neoliberalism in New Zealand in subsequent years; probably no country went so far as to liberalise and privatise state services. Minto was offered the 'Companions of Oliver Tambo' award by the African National Congress last year, but because of the post-apartheid SA government's adoption of neoliberal policies, which have increased inequality, unemployment and misery, Minto declined the award. (Brutus had been offered entrance to the SA Sports Hall of Fame at the same time, but turned it down on grounds of residual racism in SA sport condoned by the Hall.)

Just before bedding down for the night on a pavement in Delft, a veteran New Zealand anti-apartheid activist said that despite democracy in South Africa, there was greater economic inequality now than under white minority rule.

John Minto, in the country for the first time, made headlines last year when he rejected then-president Thabo Mbeki's nomination for the Companions of Oliver Tambo Award.

In rejecting it, he wrote to Mbeki that it seems the entire economic structure which underpinned apartheid is essentially unchanged. Oppression based on race has morphed seamlessly into oppression based on economic circumstances.

Commenting on the timing of his first visit to South Africa, Minto said it was a mere coincidence that it co-incided with the coming elec-tions on April 22.

He said the purpose of his visit was to see what has happened 15 years on and what has changed for the most vulnerable. He said he wanted to take a message home for those who had fought against apartheid.

Asked whether his anti-ANC stance regarding the party's social and economic policies had changed, he said: The faces at the top have changed from white to black but the substance of change is an illusion.

Minto visited a few Cape Flats communities yesterday and then spent the night with the Delft pavement dwellers, evicted from the N2 Gateway housing project last year.

He was expected to meet with Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu today before continuing his trip across the country.

Asked why he wanted to sleep on the pavement, he said: It's a small act of solidarity.

The sentiment is strong. I talked to a number of people and they said that they had political rights but no social and economic rights, he said.

Minto said people had lost faith in the ANC, taking a swipe at the government's free- market approach, which he said favoured the rich few and suppressed the poor majority.

He said he had read the ANC and Cope election manifestos and that they contained nothing inspiring.

There are just words that don't transform into anything, said Minto.

He equated the ANC with Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF, saying that in the coming five years the situation was bound to get worse for the poor.

Minto said society should be judged by how it aimed to change the lives of the poor.

This presentation covers ethnic relations in historical context, anddisputes the rewritten history. Nelson Muhirwa holds a bachelor degreein commerce and management from the Private Institute of Business andManagement in Rwanda. He worked in the office of the former Presidentprior to the genocide, and later moved to the Bank of Kigali. He ishimself a genocide survivor. He is 41 years old, married and living inSouth Africa.

Speaker: Jean Chrisostome KanamugireTopic: Justice and reconciliation since the genocide

Jean Chrisostome Kanamugire is a PhD candidate in the UKZN Faculty ofLaw, Pietermaritzburg. He holds LLB and LLM (Environmental Law) degreesfrom the same University. His research interest is water pollutioncontrol, business law and human rights. He is interested particularly inhow justice can contribute to reconciliation and vice-versa. He wasinvolved with the South African Non-Government Organisation Coalition inthe preparation of the World Conference Against Racism, RacialDiscrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban in 2001.

Meth is a CCS visiting scholar, and lifelong resident of Wentworth. Hisresearch investigates ways in which gang related activities and crime inWentworth impede community life, and he contrasts the ways in which themunicipality and civil society have responded to these challenges.

The city made a big mistake by licensing liquor joints last year, arguesOliver Meth

The shots rang out shortly after 1pm on Saturday last week, and many ofus ran out of the Barracks - blocks of flats next to the Engen refinery- to find yet another teenage corpse: Zukz MacDonald. He joined TersiaHeslop, Roman van Schalkwyk and Sebastian Roskruge as some of thisyear’s victims of Wentworth violence.

A growing epidemic of drug usage and gangs is causing the death of toomany of our youngsters. Violence is raging out of control. Nightclubsseem to be the main site, and gangs the main source.

With a population of 27,000 residents and a 40% unemployment rate,Wentworth is desperate. The area was designated as ‘Coloured’ duringapartheid-era racial planning.

We catch the bulk of pollution emitted in the South Durban IndustrialBasin. Factories line Wentworth’s northern, western and easternperimeters. The huge oil refinery, mockingly called ‘the ship that neversails’, is a constant threat, with leaking pipes, nighttime toxic gasemissions, and periodic infernos.

Our location and working-class/poor status give Wentworth the reputationof a difficult community. Environmental pollution, drug infestation, andan epidemic of gangsterism plagued the area during the 1980s-1990s, andwe are now suffering a rebirth of all three.A huge increase in oil refining is expected, thanks to the planned R50billion pipeline that will carry petrol to Gauteng. But affectedcommunities object that the path chosen reeks of environmental racism.

As for gangs, the pattern is familiar. ‘We done the time, they done thecrime’ says a rueful Peter Usher, who a quarter century ago was a memberof the local Wentworth Trucks gang. He and four others were sentencedcollectively to 79 years for the murder of a crippled member of thecompeting Woodstock Vultures gang. To this day the Trucks passionatelyproclaim their innocence and seek redress in the new political dispensation.

Younger gang members seem to carry the ‘legacy’ of the 1980’s – andquite bluntly live for revenge. So the cycle of violence, drug usage,and prostitution has been kickstarted, reminding residents of the early1980s when gangs were rife and people were afraid to walk the streets atnight.

It is here that I was born and raised by my gran, in Reiger Road, in ableak, dilapidated council housing unit. “The 80’s, it was like a warzone”, she tells me. After five in the afternoon, violence erupted. Inthe morning it was quiet, except for mothers were crying, week in andweek out, standing in front of open graves.

For decades that was the story of Wentworth - a small community undersiege while gangsters openly conducted turf wars in the streets. Around1999 members of the community rose up and changed that.

For the past eight years it seemed as if the peace was holding, but thenthe nightclubs scrambled back into town.

A decade ago, the late Catholic Priest Father Cyril Carey, the prominentenvironmental activist Des D’Sa and many others dedicated their servicesto the community of Wentworth. They arranged peace negotiations withgang members and the closure of places which fostered violence. But itnow seems that the peace they worked so hard for is over.

D'Sa himself nearly lost his life in January, in a petrol bomb attack onhis family’s own small council flat.

Who should we blame? And who has the power to make a difference, here?

The situation in Wentworth got out of hand when nightclubs – Room47,Hip-Pop Palace, Atmosphere and Revolution - were allowed back into thearea by City Manager Michael Sutcliffe. Violence broke out seriously atRoom 47 a year ago, when six murders were traced to the nightclub withina month, according to D’Sa.

“There was collusion between Wentworth police and owners, especially inthe case of Da Flava, now called Revolution. We also had five murderslast month, and a number of other shootings and stabbings.”

D’Sa continues, “The level of drug abuse is very high, even in primaryschools. No school is untouched. This is why the gangs have sprung up,to control turf around these sites.”

“This is linked to organized crime, we believe. There has been amigration of trouble from the Point and West Street, coinciding with thenew liquor licenses,” he charges.

Crime syndicates brought in well-known lawyers to manage licensingapplications at the Area Based Management office in Jacobs.

Representing the Wentworth Development Forum, D’Sa sent Sutcliffe appealafter appeal but to no avail. Last week he read that the City Managerwould crack down on liquor licenses – but not in Wentworth.

“We are angry that Sutcliffe is kicking out illegal liquor outlets fromhis own neighbourhood, as he lives in a penthouse on the Point.”

Sutcliffe told the press, Regulation of liquor licences should be dealtwith firmly.

Complains D’Sa, “This guy is cleaning up the mess in town, buttransferring all the rubbish to our area. The cops cannot handle it,even if they are straight. The senior police are scared of these gangs.Rape and HIV incidence is rising rapidly. Kids are high on drugs and aremore promiscuous. There are unlicensed firearms everywhere.”

This leaves civil society to pick up the pieces left by a failed state.Mothers patrol the area around Umbilo Secondary to make sure learnersare not accosted by gangsters. D’Sa and other courageous citizens persevere.

One day Sutcliffe will be within earshot, and asked to declare why helet the nightclubs come back, bringing us all the drunkenness, drugs,violence and murders.

Oliver Meth is a community scholar at the University of KwaZulu-NatalCentre for Civil Society.

What are the implications of water access, for how people have lived, live and wish to live their lives in different parts of eThekwini municipality? People’s relationship to water is connected to and affected by different instruments of policy and different technologies. The seminar reviews theoretical and methodological foundations of a doctoral dissertation in progress, as well as tentative findings derived from data collected during recent field work.

CCS Visiting Scholar Sofie Hellberg is a PhD Candidate from University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and working on her Ph.D dissertation on water service delivery in eThekwini Municipality. The dissertation takes its point of departure from the notion of biopolitics and looks into how instruments of policy implementation are restricting and/or making possible certain ways of life and how these are interpreted incorporated and/or contested in the local contexts of Durban as they are manifested in people everyday lives.

Over the last fifteen years, the South African government adopted a neoliberal economic policy and at the same time faced the challenge of service delivery including adequate housing, water, electricity, social security, access to education and the health system. In this presentation of a masters-level thesis from Marburg University, Claar focuses on successes and failures of government policies, especially with regard to labour and poverty.

A CCS Visiting Scholar, Claar studied political science at Philipps-University Marburg. She spent 2005 at the University of Stellenbosch. She is presently a doctoral student and research associate at the Political Science Institute at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. She is analysing political, economic and social processes in contemporary South Africa, especially in relation to trade and international political economy.

The African Development Bank has funded a variety of water and sanitation projects for the poor. Are these sustainable, and how do civil society institutions react? The seminar provides evidence from doctoral work in progress, in relation to Integrated Water Resources Management strategies, from Burundi, Ghana, Malawi, Morocco and Uganda. These are key pilot sites in the US$14.2 billion rural water supply and sanitation initiative launched by the African Development Bank in 2003. Is 'water as a human right' an appropriate framework for civil society in these contexts?

Simphiwe Nojiyeza is a long-standing researcher in the water/sanitation field, and a doctoral student at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society.

The current economic and social situation in Zimbabwe is chaotic and oppressive. The Zanu PF)/MDC government is confronted by Mugabe's legacy of crony capitalism and looting, monetary laxity and currency destruction, the world's highest-ever inflation rate, deindustrialisation, services breakdown, mass unemployment, shortages of most essentials available to the masses, and an extremely high cost of living. How did this happen, and what can we expect in the near future? Are 'sanctions' an issue? This paper provides the latest reliable statistics, including on donor aid, debt and other controversial topics.

The contradictions in civil society responses will be explored, as well, given the divergent interests between donors/financiers and social networks such as the Zimbabwe People's Convention, Zimbabwe Social Forum, trade unions, women's groups and community organisations.

Deniz Kellecioglu Is also the information officer for the Swedish NGO Africa Groups of Sweden, which employs him. Deniz is monitoring, analysing and describing the socioeconomic and political dynamics of Zimbabwe. Earlier, he assisted on research on two books about global development by Stefan de Vylder, a veteran development economist, and taught part-time in economics at Stockholm University, where he graduated in 2002.

The production of knowledge about society has advanced enormously with the advent of ICT documentation of progressive social movements. Precedents for research on ICTs in South African social movements will be considered from Latin America: the Zapatistas of Chiapas state in Mexico, and a Brazilian NGO (the Committee for Democracy in Information Technology) plus a network of ICT movements (Movimentos em Rede). How do lessons from these cases inform a major research initiative into South African social movement ICT activities?

Kalinca Copello worked in Brazil with projects promoting the social inclusion of low-income communities by using information and communication technologies as tools to encourage active citizenship. She co-founded Movimentos em Rede (Movements Through Networks), an NGO focused on fostering the social movement and network communications of community-based organisations. In 2004 she was awarded scholarship to do a MA in International Public Services at DePaul University. Her research there culminated in a thesis titled The Zapatista Movement¹s Social & Electronic Network Impact on NGOs: Chiapas Lessons. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in the Science and Technology Policy Research Department at University of Sussex, looking at the role of ICTs (mobile and Internet) for grassroots participation in social movements.

Next week, South Africa's Climate Summit will be held at Gallagher Estate. The SA government has received good publicity for its Long Term Mitigation Scenario, but civil society offers heated critiques of the coal/nuclear energy construction programme, and the failure to adjust electricity tariffs to incorporate climate considerations. SA is one of the world's worst CO2 emitters, with an energy sector twenty times worse than the equivalent US sector measured in per capita terms per unit of economic output. But how do such problems relate to people on the ground, in Durban's communities?

A new booklet, Climate Change for the People of South Durban, is one of the most important social education innovations in community organising, and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance is already one of the world's leading CBO/NGOs on the danger of industrial emissions. In this work, SDCEA's research team - led by Lisa Ramsey - take forward the concerns of vulnerable residents, for whom flooding, rising seas and wetlands, and other extreme weather events add to the existing dangers of living in Ethekwini's main industrial corridor. The issue also may decide the fate of the Durban-Johannesburg petroleum pipeline, which is now bound up in the environmental impact assessment appeal process because of SDCEA's claims of eco-racism and climate damage.

In addition to a discussion of the booklet (to be available at http://ccs.ukzn.ac.za), we will screen the 2007 film made by CCS Masters Student Rehana Dada for SABC's 50/50 tv show: Climate Crisis.

Lee Ramsay is a doctoral candidate at Cambridge University Department of Geography, and primary author of the new booklet.

The topic of Free Basic Water requires continual revisiting, in no small part because of a major new motion picture, FLOW, devoted to the cause. Other reasons include:

the Phiri, Soweto community won a Johannesburg High Court case to double Free Basic Water access (to 50 liters/person/day) and ban prepayment meters, but the case goes to the Supreme Court of Appeals from 23-25 February since Johannesburg Water and the national water department and Treasury refused to accept that existing policies are unconstitutional;

Durban last year shifted from six kiloliters/household/month of Free Basic Water to nine, but added an onerous 'indigency policy';

in Istanbul, there is a meeting next month of the triannual World Water Forum and the People's World Water Forum in an opposition session, and in 2012 there is a strong chance Durban will host the WWF;

SA's 2009 election will pit the African National Congress against political parties that promise better delivery; and

there continue to be numerous social protests against inadequate delivery of water and sanitation.

On Monday 16 February, CCS Community Scholar Orlean Naidoo and other civil society activists met with the national Director General of water, Pam Yako. In addition to a report-back and summary of debates on implementation of Free Basic Water, we will also view the film FLOW, which profiles cholera-stricken KZN communities and the Bayview area of Durban's Chatsworth community, where systematic reconnection of disconnected water and electricity continues.

SPEAKERS:

Orlean Naidoo is a long-time Chatsworth community leader, whose organisation has been fighting for Free Basic Water for more than a decade, and whose present dealings with the Durban metro offer prospects of success for Chatsworth and other communities.

CCS Director Patrick Bond has been involved in municipal water debates since the early 1990s, and played an amicus role in the Soweto water case won by Phiri residents last year.

FLOW - the film:Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis.

Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?

Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.www.flowthefilm.com

NYT Critics' PickThis movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.

Oscilloscope Pictures

New York Times movie review: The War Between Public Health and Private InterestsSeptember 12, 2008

A documentary and a three-alarm warning, “Flow” dives into our planet’s most essential resource — and third-largest industry — to find pollution, scarcity, human suffering and corporate profit. And that’s just in the United States.

Yet Irena Salina’s astonishingly wide-ranging film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests. From the dubious quality of our tap water (possibly laced with rocket fuel) to the terrifyingly unpoliced contents of bottled brands (one company pumped from the vicinity of a Superfund site), the movie ruthlessly dismantles our assumptions about water safety and government oversight.

Still reeling, we’re given a distressing glimpse of regions embroiled in bitter battles against privatization. In South Africa, villagers drink from stagnant ponds, unable to pay for the water that once was free, and protesters in Bolivia — where waste from a slaughterhouse is dumped into Lake Titicaca — brave gunfire to demand unrestricted access to potable water.

And lest we begin to comfort ourselves with first-world distance, Ms. Salina cleverly frames this section with the protracted conflict between the residents of Mecosta County, Mich., and the gluttonous demands of a Nestlé bottling plant.

Naming names and identifying culprits (hello, World Bank), “Flow” is designed to awaken the most somnolent consumer. At the very least it should make you think twice before you take that (unfiltered) shower.

Directed by Irena Salina; directors of photography, Pablo de Selva and Ms. Salina; edited by Caitlin Dixon, Madeleine Gavin and Andrew Mondshein; music by Christophe Julien; produced by Steven Starr; released by Oscilloscope Laboratories. In Manhattan at the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets, Greenwich Village. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. This film is not rated.

CCS Seminar & Film: Finding our Voices' - The value of dissent

Join us at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society for a film and discussion

FINDING OUR VOICES, narrated by Martin Sheen and produced by Holly Stadtler, Victoria Hughes and Laurel Jensen, is a testimony to the peace & justice movement in the US since 9/11/2001 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq. Using a blend of 4 years of street footage, interviews, and coverage of the lives and actions of individual dissenters, we paint the picture of a heroic struggle for the soul of America. While the film explores contemporary dissent in light of history, at core this is a film about individuals who from courage and conviction risk their jobs, reputations, and even their freedom for the lives of our soldiers, and the lives of those living in the Middle East... for peace. As they lift their voices, they call the rest of us to find ours so that in the days ahead none of us will be afraid to answer the question 'what did you do for your country and the world.'

Dennis Brutus is a lifelong peace and justice activist, honored many times for his role in not only South African anti-apartheid politics, but for giving the US anti-war movement context and non-violent strategies and tactics. He served on the George W. Bush War Crimes Tribunal, and he is an honorary professor at the UKZN Centre for Civil Society.

Moya Atkinson is active with the Code Pink anti-war movement, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and Northern Virginians for Peace and Justice. She was an early backer of the film 'Finding our Voices'.

REVIEW: Finding Our Voices: Stories of American DissentWritten by Miranda Marquit (The Panelist)Wednesday, 2 July 2008

One of the things that bothered me in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the lack of debate over the merits of the invasion. My husband was treated to almost-nightly rants about why no one was speaking out against this war, and why no one was asking tough questions.

Why, I demanded again and again, isn't the media doing its watchdog duty? (Looking back, I realize that I should have been more vocal in my own community.) What I didn't know was that some people were speaking out. However, in the midst of fears of being labeled unpatriotic (and being barred from White House press conferences and maybe not being embedded with the troops) prior to the invasion of Iraq, many of these stories weren't being covered by the mainstream media.

When I saw Finding Our Voices: Stories of American Dissent, I understood that there were significant protests about going to war with Iraq. The movie takes an interesting look at the stories of a few of the people who spoke out against the invasion of Iraq, before it began, and who continue to speak out about it five years later. It is a look at dissent in America, and puts the dissent over the Iraq War in context with the history of debate, protest and social change from the earliest moments of our country's formation. The documentary looked at such anti-war organizations as Code Pink and the efforts of representatives like Jim Moran (one of the minority who voted against giving the President authorization to start a war) to prevent the war.

Certain stories were presented in a way that was a bit melodramatic, and I suspect that there was a little puffing-up of the impact that some of these people actually had. Some of the comments about being surprised about being arrested were a bit much, since many activists (and I suspect -- though I can't prove -- that these were some of them) purposely do just what is needed in order to get arrested to bring more publicity. But the overall message was good, and the assertion that some activists that had not been arrested are on FBI watchlists with restricted travel abilities is disturbing.

I enjoyed the story of John Brady Kiesling, one of the diplomats (he was in Greece) that resigned in protest over the planned invasion of Iraq. He put the decision to go to war with Iraq in the context of American values. He asked the question: Is this us? Is this really the America we want to be? The stories that I found most intriguing also framed the discussion surrounding the Iraq War as one of values. They were stories of two soldiers who began speaking out against the Iraq War after actually serving there. My husband's cousin is getting ready for his third tour of duty in Iraq, so seeing what soldiers had to say about the war really interested me.

Camilo Mejia spoke about some of the interrogation tactics used on the Iraqi prisoners, saying he couldn't believe that, as an American, this was something considered acceptable. He also shared his fears, saying he was scared to say something, lamenting that he would be seen as a traitor for speaking out to defend others' rights.

John Bruhns also offered interesting insights from a soldier's point of view. He said he became skeptical of the morality of the war in Iraq. He pointed out that pretty soon after toppling Saddam Hussein, US soldiers were raiding homes two or three times a week, kicking in doors and looking for anti-American propaganda and weapons. After this happens two or three times a night in multiple communities, Bruhns said, the people don't feel liberated. They feel occupied. If this happened in our country... He sympathized with Iraqis who confusedly fought intruders, expressing the simple truth that if someone came to America and started doing the same thing, he'd fight to the death to defend his home.

Damn straight, I said to my husband.

In the end, though, points about values were what really interested me, the movie is really about the value of dissent. All major social change in our country -- from efforts of the Founders to throw off the reign of a tyrant to the suffragettes to the Civil Rights Movement -- has come from dissent. The Reverend Graylan Hagler summed up the position of dissent quite nicely in the movie when he pointed out how easy it is to slip from a democracy to a fascist state when people don't question the government.

Miranda is journalistically trained freelance writer who enjoys working out of her home nestled in the beautiful Cache Valley in Utah.

Moving from her own story growing up in South Africa, Susser's new book looks at the impact of the AIDS epidemic on a particularly vulnerable group – both biologically and socially – women. She touches on global inequalities underpinning the AIDS epidemic, the impact of social conservatism in the US, the logic of Mbeki’s AIDS denial and civil society reactions.

Ida Susser is Professor of Anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and adjunct professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at the HIV Center, Columbia University. She is a founding member of Athena: Advancing Gender Equity and Human Rights in the Global Response to HIV/AIDS.

Attendees (not including those on skype- cast) at our discussion of the Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement

The Israeli attacks on Palestinians over the past month represent a 'crime against humanity', with Gaza now comparable to the Warsaw Ghetto, according to leading UN officials. International civil society's desire to dissuade Israel from further mass murder has accelerated discussion on Boycott, Disinvestment, Sanctions (BDS) implementation, in a manner not disimilar to anti-apartheid strategies and tactics from the 1960s-90s. But this raises questions for our seminar:

Should academic relationships be boycotted? CCS is particularly concerned about the merits of Israeli intellectual work that promotes civil society.

Should cultural relationships be boycotted? The appearance of the Israeli ambassador to SA at the Catalina Theatre to support the Musho Treatre festival's Sounds from Here play on 13 January generated a lively protest and led to Ambassador Dov Segev-Steinberg cancellation of a wine and cheese event (groups.yahoo.com).

Monica Rorvik of the UKZN Centre for Creative Arts will also provide their perspective based on extensive experience with the BDS debate.

How should Durban's extensive economic relationships with Israel be addressed by civil society? The Veolia company's privatisation (public private partnership) of South Durban waste water treatment is in the spotlight because of the firm's expulsion from Sweden last week, partially due to their controversial profits from Isreali exploitation of Palestine. Huge shipping interests permit Israeli goods to come into Africa, and yet last April a shipment of three million Chinese bullets ordered by Robert Mugabe's army was halted by church/labour activism. Should Durban civil society ratchet up pressure on SA's extensive economic relations with Isreal?

Our distinguished speakers will address these and related issues, in a spirit of reasoned intellectual, social inquiry:

Dennis Brutus, CCS Honorary Professor and celebrated poet, was a leader of the anti-apartheid cultural, sporting, academic and economic boycotts during the 1960s-90s, and has been a supporter of BDS for several years.

Lubna Nadvi teaches Political Science and International Relations in the School of Politics at UKZN. She is also a community activist and a founder of the Action Group for Palestine.

Monica Rorvik is an official of the UKZN Centre for Creative Arts, one of South Africa's leading sites of cultural promotion.

Salim Vally is a Wits University researcher and leader of the Palestine Solidarity Committee.

PATRICK BOND:- welcome and background to seminar, including CCS's search for a position on the boycott (current Israeli relationships are through the Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research, in turn via the International Society for Third Sector Research), with different positions articulated

SALIM VALLY:- background to need for punitive policies- paper below makes detailed points- Boycott National Committee is the largest representative organisation* ending occupation/colonisation and taking down wall* recognising full equality for Palestinians in Israel- PACBI - cultural workers and academics* specific targeting of Israeli academic institutions due to complicity* due to Israeli academic institutions (primary-tertiary) being themselves discriminatory against Palestinians* due to Israel's destruction of Palestinian academic institutions* due to Israeli academics supporting military and occupation capacity of Israeli state* Hebrew University is a prime example* Israeli Centre for Third Sector Research's Hagai Katz's reply to invitation was insensitive to Israel's war crimes* in contrast many Israeli academics take a strong stand against the occuption* PACBI specifically permits such academics to be exempted

MONICA RORVIK:- background to Centre for Creative Arts activities* emphasis on voices of oppressed, including Palestinians* this year at Time of the Writer, exiled Palestinian will be herefrom Egypt* huge problems with visas and additional travel required- background to 2001 contribution from Israeli government* Arab Palestinian poet living in Israel was last case, in part because Israeli state abused her identity* no further direct funding from the Israeli state since that 2001 festival* films from Israel are sometimes at Durban International Film Festival, and occasionally they receive Israeli funding in their production and are therefore called Israeli films (this is specific to films, that their country of production, or passport comes from their funding -- the Israeli films Durban International Film Festival would choose are NOT state funded, but funded by progressive organizations)* hence a complete boycott would be unfortunate* Israeli cultural attache met UKZN's Lliane Loots (Jomba dance festival case) in 2008 and she and CCA formally said there would be no Israeli dancers sponsored until matters change in Palestine

DENNIS BRUTUS:- focus on apartheid academic boycott- academic, cultural, economic and political boycott of Israel needed- background to Durban interest, including large Gaza solidarity march on 9 March and protest against Israeli ambassador's 13 March visit- academic boycott is part of an international thrust- fighting apartheid, the academic angle was important- on question of whether progressive (anti-apartheid) academics should be exempted, a long University of Texas discussion led to a unified position with no exemptions, and this position was very effective

LUBNA NADVI:- focus on activism- Palestine Solidarity Committee launched at World Conference Against Racism here in August 2001, and PSC has had these discussions regularly since- no strategy/mechanism to date- formal BDS campaign began in 2005- power point- what boycott priorities?* consumer boycott - logos* should academic be total? still needs clarification* mechanisms and strategies need to be worked out* progressive pro-Palestinian academics are those we need to engage with and support, as they speak out against their government* Palestinian solidarity activists have called for a cut-off of ties to the Israeli state* two governments in Latin America have taken the lead: Venezuela and Bolivia* proposal for a BDS conference to take this forward* sports aspect of the boycott - should we play with Israeli sports time? - is also important

PATRICK BOND:- Durban harbour especially important on economic ties, including Veolia S.Durban waste-water contract connection, and example of the Zim bullets turned back in April 2007

SALIM VALLY:- the essential point is to take our cue from Palestinians* it's a very rich discussion* these are nuanced not crude positions* we need to use these as a point of reference* invariably there are gray areas, e.g. Pogrund trip a few years ago- Israeli embassy uses patronage to push positions, so CCA refusal of their funding is excellent* Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid showed Israeli film in Canada; is a good example of an exception- Neville Alexander offered nuanced position, in support of boycott- the nature of these type of sanctions is that they are invariable double-edged* SA white academics acknowledge that the int'l boycott forced them to wake up and be active

ARNOLD MASHAVA (researcher in UKZN School of Chem Engineering)- are we boycotting out of emotion, or in a rational way?- Israel promotes R&D in ag, chemicals, water- in case of SA, how much would academia and industry lose?- can we boycott the products and still lead a good life?- we haven't seen R&D from Arab League- in Durban we lost Blue Flag beach status because of waste, and Durban needs protocol for industry permits, and Veolia Water is leading wastewater treatment company in the world and by boycotting Veolia from privatising, are we serving Durban's interest? it's doing a great job in managing Durban's wastewater- Israel's doing a lot better than the Arab League on environmental issues

DANIEL JEWESBURY:I would offer these comments, from the perspective of Northern Ireland. In the UK university system, the attempt by the main lecturers' union to mount a boycott of Israel a few years ago was defeated by a disparate opposition that included not only the usual pro-Israeli / anti-anti-semitic voices but also some pro-Palestinian groups arguing that progressive individuals should not be covered by a boycott. Then there were those progressives opposed in general to boycotts for humanitarian reasons. The end result was that the movement was really fragmented, not only by the usual destabilisation from political opponents, but also by this internal disagreement. Ultimately the campaign was completely undermined. Given Denis's thoughts on this, and the success of the boycott of apartheid, there's clearly a need for the clear relaying, around the world, of a unified call from Palestinian groups for BDS, so that the calls for boycotts around the world have a definite 'mandate' from the Palestininan people. Similarly, artists and cultural producers continually try to distinguish between 'progressive' and 'non-progressive' institutions in Israel that they can work with.. this must weaken the boycott overall.

DENNIS:- spoke at UN, and raised the Two State Solution as unsatisfactory, an answer that got the most applause- alternative view is thinking of a single, democratic, secular state - largely sympathetic response

GIFT MASENGWE (PhD student):- issue of justice is paramount- we must provide alternatives and intensify the boycotts, and not rely on the more developed countries

DANIEL:hear hear - well said denis. the doctrine of 'parity of esteem' here in northern ireland is nothing less than imposed segregation and perpetuated sectarianism. more 'peace walls' separating communities have been built over the last ten years. the two-state 'solution' is simply a mandate to build more walls.

TAHMID QUAZI (PhD student):- in communications, and aware of needs for alternatives- if we are reliant on pro-Israeli companies, we are feeding its aggression- the full list of companies to be boycotted is too extensive, e.g. our addiction to MS and Coke- on Israeli technology, yes, it's advanced; but let's not blame the Arabs- ultimately this is about justice, and injustice imposed by Zionist regime, with culture/sports used to cloud the issue- for boycott, we need to be more surgical (e.g. Checkers example)

ARNOLD- Japan development example, including use of US patents- for wastewater management, the right technologies are from Veolia- does Israel have a right to defend itself? what led to

DANIEL:if the boycott campaign is compromised by the need to 'balance' our need for israeli technology then it's become depoliticised - i agree very much with patrick re veolia

PATRICK:- on Veolia, critique

SALIM:- more on Veolia- SA has lots of technical competence, e.g. nuclear and chemical weapons- Isreal has caused tremendous enviro hardship- Arab League argument is non sequitor because Arab despotic regimes are enemies of Palestinians- Nazi concentration camps were built by technical experts - but they forgot how to be human, so drop the pragmatic techie argument- don't forget Samora Machel's advocacy of solidarity

LUBNA:- how to use boycott to inflict maximum damage to state machinery?- we need a BDS conference to get clarity- alternative: 'buy South African'

SALIM:- do we put profits before acts of solidarity? we would not have got freedom if we did not sacrifice profits- academic/cultural boycott - follow the clear position from Palestine- on economics, many parastatals use Israeli products (Canada picket of bookstore, and Scotland picketing a water company)

DANIEL:thanks patrick, it's a privilege to take part in this forum, and to express solidarity not only with palestine but with comrades in south africa too. if you have notes to email later, please send them to me also on d.jewesbury@gmail.com

PATRICK:note from Adam Habib (endorsed by Alan Fowler) opposes boycott: The academic boycott in SA was very selectively applied. Where academics were coming to serve progressive activists we ignored it. Where visits were directed to official govt institutions we demanded its implementation. As for ICTR, I would suggest that we do not simply call for a boycott. Rather we force them to evolve the program in ways that would undermine the right wing agenda in Israel. Two years ago when I was invited and attended, I said I will do so only on condition that Palestinian intellectuals were on the program. This time we could demand not only inclusion of Palestinian intellectuals but a panel or two on the incursions, its impact etc.

SALIM:Hagia's response to Patrick clearly puts him and his institution on the side of the Israeli war machine. They should be boycotted

DENNIS:Any support for the Israeli regime should be avoided, and ICTR conference in March should be boycotted

PATRICK:We will discuss internally and on Thursday at our CCS meeting get an official organisational position.

LUBNA:Action Group for Palestine is moving forward on this as well, and will be asking UKZN management to take a formal position too.

Thanks for your participation!Cheers,Patrick

Salim Vally,School of Education,University of the Witwatersrand*

The AAUP’s decision to openly debate its position on the academic boycott of Israeli institutions deserves praise. But my experience—as a formerly oppressed person whose general freedom and specific academic freedom were once denied, as one who received succor from international solidarity and eventually benefited from the isolation of and defeat of the ancien régime, as a former chairperson of South Africa’s Freedom of Expression Institute, and as an academic colleague who values interactions with his peers throughout the world—leads me to support an academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

Academics and SocietyIn the struggle against the apartheid state, conceptions about any arena of social practice were inextricable from wider conceptions of social justice and encompassed not only political freedom. These wider considerations constituted the framework on which both ethical and strategic judgments were made and practical choices decided. This was true in relation to the isolation of South Africa from the international sporting arena, in relation to the divestment campaign, in relation to the resolutions of the United Nations relative to apartheid, and, indeed, in relation to the issue of academic boycotts.

In each of these, the primary consideration was the pursuit of a set of actions that would bring censure and condemnation of the violence of the apartheid regime through international cooperation in support of the resistance struggles waged internally by the people of South Africa. These practices recognized not only the indivisibility of civil, political, and economic freedoms but also the interrelatedness (through the divestment campaign) of the violence of apartheid and the very forms of exploitation on which the whole of apartheid’s political edifice was constructed. Political, social, and economic issues were regarded as inseparable and were seen as mutually foundational to the idea of resistance and the practices—boycotts included—it shaped.

The academic boycott was never regarded as a privileged strategy, nor were academics regarded as an exceptional category. The reasons for this were simple. First, the strategies adopted by the liberation struggle placed onerous conditions on millions of individuals and many institutions in society, some more than others. Particularly for workers and the poor, the sacrifices they were asked to make exceeded those of other social classes, and in some cases it meant not only the loss of jobs, family, and health but also direct physical confrontation with a brutish state. Second, academic boycotts were supported by the majority of those academics who understood their role to be engaged and socially committed intellectuals.1 www.aaup.orgAcademics so engaged did not regard themselves as privileged when it came to making sacrifices, even though their sacrifices were, relative to those of others, less onerous and demanding. Third, we simply did not regard intellectual work as outside of accountability. Finally, the call for an academic boycott was considered a legitimate and necessary extension of the freedom struggle into other arenas of social and political engagement and practice.

The “objective test” by which the issue of an academic boycott, or any other such strategy, must be evaluated can only arise from a consideration of the conditions of each case. That is, it is determined contextually, not a priori or ahistorically. Academic freedom in the conditions of civil war, violent occupation, genocide, or conquest and subjugation must surely bear some reference to these very conditions for the criteria of its determination. Failure to recognize this will mean that the very concept of freedom more generally, and academic freedom in particular, becomes both meaningless and bereft of any practical possibilities.

Morality and EthicsAt the outset, the AAUP authors state that their report was written in response to the British Association of University Teachers’ initial announcement favoring an academic boycott as a response to a Palestinian call. The Palestinians had grounded this call on “the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression.” This moral ground is negated by the AAUP for the sake of “preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas” and “the search for truth and its free expression.” That all moral debate within the academy should be viewed only through this categorical imperative and the singular principle of “academic freedom” is, philosophically and ethically, a dubious position. It is also certainly a politically dangerous position to take, for it does not take the situational, teleological, or ethical positions into consideration.

Given the fact that Palestinians are continuing to suffer occupation, colonization, and physical apartheid (and even a wall that not only “secures” the Israeli state but also imprisons the people of Palestine), their situation seems very close to that of South Africans under apartheid. But the notion of academic freedom in the AAUP report does not allow us to critically question the foundation, formation, existence, and oppressive character of the state of Israel. So while the AAUP may be correct in theory to distinguish between the “free exchange of ideas” and “government policies,” the distinction doesn’t hold in concrete situations. Consider the view of Arthur Goldreich, a founder of the architecture department of Jerusalem’s Bezalel Academy who in the 1940s was a fighter with Israel’s Palmach and in the early sixties a member of the African National Congress’s armed wing: “I watched Jerusalem with horror and great doubt and fear for the future. There were those who said what’s happening is architecture, not politics. You can’t talk about planning as an abstraction. It’s called establishing facts on the ground.”2 www.aaup.org/AAUPGoldreich was expressing dismay at the way architecture and planning evolved as tools for illegal territorial expansion.

The Palestinians are not asking for a boycott to defend their own transcendent academic freedoms against state intervention or policies but in order to prevent the state of Israel from using its own academies as tools of state propaganda in a symbolic offensive against Palestinian rights. This is important because in this context symbolic resources are to this struggle what economicmaterial struggles are to other conflicts. And if this is the case, then a type of boycott that is “symbolic,” to use the AAUP’s characterization, is completely analogous to an economic boycott in other circumstances, which the AAUP has less difficulty with and tacitly endorses in the case of labor conflicts within the academy.

I would also argue that a boycott is a tactic in the struggle for free speech by a representative majority of Palestinian academics who are attempting to get a larger public hearing for the issue of how the “common good” can best be realized. By this means, other issues about free speech in the academy will come to be addressed, such as the role of state sponsorship of certain types of academic research and publication and the tactics various affiliates of the Israeli state use to suppress the free speech of academics around the world.

The AAUP’s report also directly suggests that academics are incapable of exercising the right moral judgment to produce an “objective test for determining what constitutes an extraordinary situation.” This is stated in such a way that the answer is already embedded in the question itself, for the document says, “there surely is not.” This undermines academics, who are shown in the document to be incompetent or unable to produce such an objective test while people are being killed, atrocities are being committed, and violations of all nature of human rights are taking place. What, given international law and universal human rights conventions and declarations, are we to make of the following statement in the AAUP’s document: “what //some //see as the Israeli occupation’s denial of rights to the Palestinians”? (Emphasis added.)

While this document accepts the fact that different strategies, including boycotts, are needed in some circumstances—and quotes Nelson Mandela on this—it denies any role for boycott except for economic boycotts, thus negating the very quotation it uses to make its argument. The AAUP argument is an attack on the moral demand for an academic boycott, seeing it as bad tactics. When, in places, the document does take the moral demand more seriously, it is entwined so obtusely with economic argumentation that it ends up reducing all nuances, which is of necessity an academic task, and fudges them in a shallow way.

Finally, a large weakness in this document is an enormous confusion over the issue of tactics and principles, or means and ends. Conveniently, other people’s positions are classified as poor tactics, while the AAUP position is defined as more principled, and its own tactics are very quickly converted into principles.

Academic Freedom under Apartheid and in PalestineThe university in South Africa played a critical role in reproducing the structural inequalities and injustices that were found in that society. Universities in South Africa—including the “liberal” ones—were closely linked to the state: they received much of their funding from the state; they provided the “scientific,” commercial, and intellectual bases for the state to continue functioning; and they were the prime knowledge producers for the state and its bureaucracy. Moreover, a large number of academics were directly linked to the state, furthered the apartheid agenda at universities, conducted research on specific issues as the state required, and even spied on other academics and students. It was such research that provided the “Christian” theological justification for racism. It also provided some of the basis for the security forces’ military operations against neighboring countries and liberation movements. But of course, there was resistance to this, and the university was, as we called it, an important “site of struggle.”

The Israeli university is not that much different from what the South African one was. Israeli universities and a number of individual Israeli academics play key roles in providing the intellectual support for the Israeli state and its endeavors. Certain Israeli universities have very strong links to the military establishment, particularly through their provision of postgraduate degrees to the military. A number of Israeli academics provide the practical and ideological support necessary for the maintenance of the occupation and even for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, extrajudicial killings, racial segregation, and land expropriation. Consider the homicidal rant of one Arnon Soffer, who has spent years advising the Israeli government on the “demographic threat” posed by the Arabs: “When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today. . . . So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”3 www.aaup.org

In the main, Israeli institutions of higher learning, according to the testimonies of a number of Israeli academics, certainly are not consistent with the principle that “[i]nstitutions of higher education are conducted for the common good . . . [which] depends on the free search for truth and its free exposition.”4 www.aaup.org/AAUPThe “common good”—whether “common” includes only Israelis or both Israelis and Palestinians—is not served when universities and individual academics support racism, ethnic cleansing, and the continued violation of international law. Can we ask colleges and universities to be “institutions committed to the search for truth and its free expression” when they willingly support a state and military complex that promotes discrimination among their student bodies and when they have no regard for their fellow academics (Palestinian and dissenting Israeli academics) whose academic freedom is trampled and denied at every turn by the patrons of these colleges and universities? Avraham Oz, in his comments on a May 2005 conference titled “The Demographic Problem and the Demographic Policy of Israel,” held at the University of Haifa, points out that it was not just an individual academic that lent “credibility to this conference which promoted ethnic cleansing”; the guest of honor was the rector of the university, Yossi Ben-Artzi.5 www.aaup.orgWhen the South African liberation movements called for academic boycotts against South African institutions and academics, the institutions that were targeted included the academic bastions of apartheid (such as the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Potchestroom), the liberal white universities (such as the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Cape Town), as well as the black ghetto universities (such as the University of Durban-Westville and the University of the Western Cape). The “victims” in this case included white and black academics, liberals and racists, those who supported apartheid and those who supported the antiapartheid struggle. The South African experience highlights a comment in Committee A’s statement, that an academic boycott “inevitably involves a refusal to engage in academic discourse with teachers and researchers, not all of whom are complicit in the policies which are being protested.” South Africans understood this very well when we called for such boycotts against our country.

Further, the assertion that an academic boycott against Israeli institutions will compromise academic freedom needs, of necessity, to be followed by the questions: Whose academic freedom? and Who benefits from this “academic freedom”?

In the South African context, we understood that sanctions and boycotts were targeted against the state and various institutions within broader South African society—businesses, institutions of higher learning, sporting institutions, and so on—so that black people, primarily, might be liberated from the shackles, injustices, and humiliations we faced. It is true, as Ronnie Kasrils, the South African minister of intelligence, argued, that ultimately it was both black and white South Africans who were liberated.6 www.aaup.orgHowever, the international community recognized and acknowledged the oppression of black people and the need for their liberation.

In the Israeli-Palestinian context, we should be asking whose academic freedom and whose human rights it is that we want to protect. It is Palestinians who are living under occupation. It is Palestinians within Israel who are being discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity. Ultimately, as Kasrils and Victoria Brittain argued in the Guardian, both Palestinians and Israelis will be liberated.7 ://www.aaup.org

If we are to ask “whose academic freedom,” then we are forced to consider what academic freedom actually exists for Palestinians. Is the academic freedom of a professor in Birzeit University equal to that of a professor at Haifa University, when the former is under occupation by a government that is supported by the latter? Palestinian academics daily run a gauntlet of soldiers, checkpoints, roadblocks, and the threat of arrest, detention, and death in order to be able to get to their institutions to perform basic tasks like teaching and researching. They often teach classes that are sparsely populated, usually because students could not get through the checkpoints. Students sometimes are trapped in their universities for days, unable to get home because of curfews and checkpoints.

And the basic rights of academics, as explained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), do not exist for Palestinian academics in the occupied Palestinian territories.8 www.aaup.org

CCS Seminar: Participatory community audio/video as a tool for social research

Participatory Video (PV) was pioneered as a community development tool,but has recently been incorporated into the social sciences as aresearch method. With experience of using PV in a variety of communityprojects as well as for research, the seminar will introduce the generalconcept and method of PV and highlight the strengths, affordances andchallenges encountered when deploying PV as a tool for research. As forinnovative community audio, the Durban Sings! project has already madegreat leaps in documenting the voices of Durban's oppressed communities:www.archive.org/details/DurbanSings. As one example, the team took thefollowing audio in central Durban while documenting rising xenophobicstate/social violence: Albert Park, October 2008: A gathering ofmakeshift shelters in a public park in the city of Durban, South Africa.A group of Congolese have been living here under plastic cover sinceJune. Pots over open wood fires, washing on lines between the trees,many children are running around the huts. What happened? What made thegroup settle here under precarious conditions? What happens to thechildren when it's raining…? Gideon, a local passer-bye talks toDelphine, one of the group who is now living at Albert Park (track03-08). Delphine responds with questions and songs and tells theirstory. Rebecca and Oliver, from the Centre for Civil Society are regularvisitors. They join the conversation (track 02) while preparations for achicken-curry are going on in the background. More songs follow.(http://www.archive.org/DurbanSings_84) The seminar will be presented by Pamela Ngwenya, Molefi Ndlovu andClaudia Wegener.

Pamela Ngwenya is a visiting postgraduate student from the University ofOxford. Her doctoral research concerns the ethical dimensions of sugar,and considers different ethical philosophies and concepts (includingfeminist and posthumanist notions of the embodiment) in conversationwith empirical work on Caribbean sugar. She also studied at theUniversity of Edinburgh and University of Calfornia, Davis, and alsoworked as a research assistant at the Centre for the Study of Democracyand for the University of California on an international projectconcerning the colonial history of chocolate. She also spent some timewith the United Nations Development Fund for Women, working on a needsand capacity assessment of women in agriculture in Barbados. For thepast three years Pamela has been training and practicing videoproduction, focussing on participatory practices and youth work. She isnow an associate of 'Insight', a leading participatory videoorganisation based in the UK and has carried out over a dozenparticipatory video projects in the UK and the Caribbean and is nowhelping to implement projects in Southern Africa. Pamela's generalresearch interests include: food and agricultural change; ethicalphilosophies; feminist geography; bodies and technologies; the politicsof nature; video methodologies; and ethnobotanical practices.

Molefi Ndlovu is a CCS Community Scholar and student of communitydevelopment at UKZN, and has done research on student/youth politics,social movements, energy and water. He was named amongst 100 leadingyoung South Africans by the Mail & Guardian last year. He is presentlyworking on community audio, drawing on experiences with Soweto's RASA FMpirate community station.

Claudia Wegener is a German-born, London-based specialist in internetaudio and community radio. She helped to innovate the Durban Sings!project, amongst many other initiatives to raise the voices of thedispossessed.

The triannual World Water Forum has evoked intense criticism from thewater justice community. In The Hague (2000), Osaka (2003) and MexicoCity (2006), the WWF attracted vibrant protests, including a 10000-strong march against the Mexico forum site. Even more protests willbe launched by those opposed to water commodification at the IstanbulWWF in March 2009, with two alternative forums being planned in reactionto the World Water Council's elite festival. The water justice movementshave demanded that the WWF cease operations in Istanbul (see below). Inthe event this demand is not agreed to, the South African government -in competition with France - is considering inviting the WWF to Durbanin 2012. When global governance confabs arrived in Durban in 2001 (WorldConference Against Racism) and Johannesburg in 2002 (World Summit onSustainable Development), the reaction by civil society was impressive:huge protests, sophisticated critiques and unprecedented unity amongst anormally fractious left. If the WWF continues, what are the pros andcons of a WWF in Durban, a site celebrated by the world's water mafiafor successful commodification under the guise of 'public-privatepartnerships', pilot 'free basic water' strategies, installation of'urinary diversion' sanitation (a.k.a. the 'neoliberal loo'), and massdisconnections, even of schools? Bring 'em on? Shoe 'em away? Anopen debate with varied insider-outsider positions is anticipated.

PANEL:Dale McKinley was born and raised in Zimbabwe, and studied in the UnitedStates where he received his PhD in Politics/African Studies and was astudent activist at the University of North Carolina. He is a co-founderof the Anti-Privatisation Forum and currently the organisation’streasurer, as well as a leader of the Coalition Against WaterPrivatisation. He has published two books and scores of book chapters,journal articles and newspaper articles.

Orlean Naidoo has been a CCS Community Scholar since 2007 and works onwater/sanitation in Chatsworth and various other sites. She hascoauthored articles about the water struggle and is a leading communityactivist in Durban.

Dudu Khumalo works as a CCS Community Scholar and in various other waterresearch consultancies. She has authored water articles for Agenda andThe Mercury, and campaigned on behalf of people displaced by the Inanda Dam.

Bryan Ashe coordinates the SA Water Caucus, and has been involved indiscussions regarding prospects for SA's hosting of the WWF in 2012.

An Open Call to the Global Water Justice Movement to Mobilize Againstthe False World Water Forum

Let us join together in Istanbul, Turkey, March 14-22, 2009 to protectwater as a human right, global commons and public good to expose theillegitimate power of the World Water Council!

Following the successes of past resistance against World Water Forums,most notably the mass mobilizations and Jornadas en Defensa del Agua inMexico City in 2006,

Using the principles in the Mexico Declaration and previous jointdeclarations of the water justice movement as the basis for this call toaction,

Respecting the struggles, waged daily by grassroots activists to improvewater conditions for people and nature,

And standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters from Turkey whoare organizing an extensive slate of counter events in Istanbul andaround the country in a strong show of resistance,

We call upon social movements, networks and individual water activistscommitted to principles of equity, justice and sustainability, tomobilize against the upcoming 5th World Water Forum.

This 5th World Water Forum, as with the previous 4 World Water Forums,is being organized by the World Water Council—a body created andcontrolled by the global private water industry and which continues topromote water privatization, destructive dams, commodification andcommercialization, projects and policies proven to harm people andcommunities; local food systems, livelihoods and indigenous resource base.

The time is here to end the reign of these Water Barons and launch atruly inclusive and accountable forum to deal with the grave situationfacing humanity and the planet.

Together we will work to counter privatization efforts, – includingmining of water for industries or for chemical intensive commercialagriculture –, and high-risk hydropower around the world and in Turkeywhere the government has dangerously proposed the construction ofdestructive dams and the privatization of lakes and rivers.

We will continue to support local campaigns and social movements in boththe South and North, working strongly with Red Vida, the Africa WaterNetwork, the international movement against destructive dams and theEuropean Public Water Network. We commit to augment condemnation of theWorld Water Council with the promotion of viable alternatives such asPublic-Public Partnerships, community-control models based on principlesof rights and responsibilities to the commons and water democracy.

This gathering simultaneously provides opportunities for water justiceactivists to learn from and support each other's efforts, as well as tolobby government representatives who will be in attendance at theofficial Forum.

As in Mexico in 2006, Kyoto in 2003 and the Hague in 2000, it isimportant to challenge the destructive neo-liberal, pro-privatizationand pro-large dams agenda of the Forum organizers, but even moreimportant, to launch a process and new Water Forum tied to actual Stateobligations, within a United Nations framework and working with localcommunity-based efforts and actors to achieve water justice.

Therefore,We call upon governments to join with the governments of Uruguay,Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba, who in 2006 signed the 4th World WaterForum Counter Declaration, demanding implementation of a truly open andtransparent multilateral process.

We call upon the United Nations and its member governments to acceptyour obligation, as the only legitimate global convener of multilateralforums, to publicly commit to hosting a Forum on Water, which is linkedto state obligations and is accountable to the global community.

We call upon all organizations and governments who choose to attend the5th World Water Forum, to commit to making this the last and to join inthe launching of a legitimate Global Forum on Water, emerging fromwithin the UN processes and supported by States.

We call upon all who share our commitment to mobilize in their owncommunities during the World Water Forum, in a show of solidarity withthose struggling for water justice and as a call to the global communityto mobilize on this critical issue.

We finally call upon all committed activists, elected representatives,government representatives and progressive organizations to join in theupcoming mobilization standing alongside our allies in Turkey.

Global Week of Actions for Water JusticeMarch 14-22, 2009

As part of the call to the global water justice movements to mobilizeagainst the false World Water Forum, we commit to mobilize for theGlobal Week of Actions for Water Justice. The global week of actionserves as a common platform for movements, peoples' organizations,activists and citizens, elected representatives and governmentscommitted to water justice— for all communities to access safe,affordable water for drinking, fishing, recreational, and cultural usesin an equitable, effective, democratic way.

We invite and urge movements, organizations, and citizens around theworld to undertake actions in their own countries that reflect their ownstruggles, character, and possibilities. This can either be a seminar orforum about your struggles, rally or symbolic action, a concert or pressconference, etc. All actions related to our common goal of water justiceare welcome—from more modest actions to larger mobilizations.

We invite you to share information about your plans by sending us ashort paragraph outlining your planned activities and engagements(including date and place), contact details, including Country andOrganization. Information can be sent to mbmanahan@focusweb.org.

Silenced voices?, a film, is about Zimbabwean political exiles living in Durban, South Africa. Through the voices of two exiles, a tale unfolds of brutal repression and crushed democratic aspirations. But the trumph of the human spirit is undeniable because even in exile the hope for a free Zimbabwe is still at the centre of the their lives.

Mavuso Dingani, is a Zimbabwean writer living in Durban. He has been politically active for more than a decade. This is his debut as a filmmaker.